Gazprom, he said, would need two to three years to make Sakhalin-3 ready for production.
Gazprom wants supplies of Sakhalin-1 gas to China blocked
The management of Russia’s gas giant Gazprom has asked the government to reserve all amounts of gas produced within the framework of the Sakhalin-1 project for domestic needs, Itar-Tass reports. At a meeting of the government commission for the social and economic development of Russia’s Far East and areas east of Lake Baikal Gazprom’s Deputy CEO Alexander Ananenkov asked Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov to block the contract for selling 8 billion cubic meters of gas from Sakhalin-1 to China. According to some analysts, Russia’s four Far Eastern regions need over 15 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year. Ananenkov believes it might be feasible to use hydrocarbons produced at Sakhalin-1 fields for distribution in Russia’s eastern regions. “There are practically no other sources there today,” he said. “The government should make a resources management decision on Sakhalin-1 this year,” he said. At the same time he speculated it would be possible to lay a gas pipeline from Yakutia to Khabarovsk and to start gas production at the Sakhalin-3 field by 2016.