Page 9 - FSUOGM Week 39 2022

FSUOGM INVESTMENT FSUOGM

Gazprom doubles 2022 investment plan

RUSSIA GAZPROM’S management committee has Gazprom’s cuts to gas supply to a number of
approved a draft plan to double the company’s European buyers, as the drop in volumes has
The company is investments in 2022. been more than offset by the soaring cost of gas.
investing new projects The committee has signed off on RUB1.98 As both Russia and Europe push to end their
to send its gas to Asia. trillion ($34bn) of capital expenditure this year, energy relationship, Gazprom is preparing to
marking a 13% increase on the previous plan for divert as much gas as possible to Asian markets
the year that was agreed in December 2021. The instead.
extra funding will go towards the development The 38bn cubic metres per year Power of
of gas fields on the Yamal Peninsula, and in the Siberia pipeline currently flows gas to China
eastern Irkutsk and Yakutia regions. Investment from only one field, the Chayandinskoye
will also go towards further construction of the deposit in Yakutia. But Gazprom is preparing
Power of Siberia pipeline. to link a second field, Kovyktinskoye, in Irkutsk
Gazprom’s deputy chairman, Famil Sadygov, in December, it said on September 14. Ahead
said the company had produced solid results of the field’s launch, Gazprom needs to com-
in the first half of this year, but would retain its plete a pipeline connecting Kovyktinskoye with
focus on cost control and a balanced cash flow. Chayandinskoye.
The investment increase was agreed on follow- Over the longer term, Gazprom’s priority is
ing a 34% rise in gas revenues in the six-month the 50 bcm per year Power of Siberia 2 pipeline to
period. Sadygov noted that the growth in reve- China, which is set to be built through Mongolia.
nues had more than offset any negative impacts The pipeline will carry gas from the Yamal Pen-
from recent tax reform in Russia. insula, from fields including those that currently
That growth in revenues comes despite supply the European market. ™

PERFORMANCE

Russian oil equipment in better shape

than thought: BCS GM

RUSSIA RUSSIA is better positioned to replace lost in the view of many, means that Russian oil pro-
international oil and gas equipment than most duction is doomed to slip into an irreversible
The system is less observers believe, Moscow-based brokerage decline. We have generally disagreed with this
vulnerable to the exit of BCS GM said last week. view.”
foreign companies than The share of oilfield equipment that Rus- While Russia has since the Soviet era relied
assumed, according to sia uses that is produced domestically should substantially on the import of international
BCS GM. increase to 80% by 2025, versus 60% currently knowledge and equipment, several decades have
and 40% in 2014, the deputy head of the industry meant that Russian specialists “are largely fully
ministry said, according to Interfax. Separately, up to speed with their international peers, while
Gazprom Neft’s deputy head Vadim Yakovlev Russian domestic industry is rapidly catching up
said last week that his company would be testing with manufacturing the equipment necessary,
a completely Russian-made fracking fleet at one particularly for horizontal drilling and running
of its Western Siberian fields next year. multi-stage hydrofracking jobs,” BCS GM ana-
With its partners, the company estimates lysts said.
it will manufacture 10 such fleets per year by “Indeed, much of that equipment needed for
around 2025. There are around 140 fleets cur- these activities is not all that difficult to manu-
rently operating in Russia. facture for countries with a developed industrial
“The import vulnerability of Russian oil pro- base, of which Russia is one,” they said.
ducers is less than many think: these comments BCS GM concluded that the challenges faced
tend to support a view of ours that, contrary to by the likes of Lukoil, Rosneft, Surgutnefte-
what many international observers think, Rus- gas, Tatneft and Gazprom Neft were therefore
sian oil companies are not critically and irre- “solvable.”
trievably dependent upon imported technology,” “First with parallel imports, and then with
BCS GM analysts said in a note. “Thus the depar- increasing amounts of domestically made equip-
ture of foreign oilfield service (OFS) companies, ment,” the brokerage said. ™

Week 39 30•September•2022 www. NEWSBASE .com P9