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Gazprom pledges to give Rosneft access to Sakhalin gas transport system

In June, Gazprom denied Rosneft access to the Sakhalin-2 pipeline, saying there is no free capacity

KARA SEA, September 29. /ITAR-TASS/. Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller has pledged to give Russian oil giant Rosneft access to Gazprom’s gas transportation system on the Pacific Island of Sakhalin, Rosneft head Igor Sechin said on Monday.

“I have no doubts that we’ll gain access to the Sakhalin pipe,” Sechin said. “We had a meeting in August with Alexey Miller and Energy Minister Alexander Novak. Gazprom is exploring its own resource base for building up the capacities of the LNG project under Sakhalin-2, which it plans to complete before the end of 2015,” he said.

Meanwhile, Rosneft “needs to take a decision before that, and its resource base is already available,” the Rosneft head said. “That is why, we agreed at that meeting that Gazprom will provide us access to its gas transportation system,” Sechin said.

After Gazprom takes a decision on expanding the capacities of the Saklhalin-2 project, two options will be considered, Sechin said. “This may involve modernization of the existing gas transportation system or the construction of a second gas pipe. In any case, we (Rosneft) will pay a tariff for gas pumping,” Sechin said.

It was earlier reported that Rosneft had filed a lawsuit on July 7 to the Sakhalin Arbitration Court demanding that Sakhalin Energy, the operator of Gazprom’s Sakhalin-2 gas project, ensures access for the plaintiff to the free capacities of the Sakhalin-2 trunk gas pipeline, gives the plaintiff technical specifications and the points of connection to the Sakhalin-2 gas transportation system to pump up to 8 billion cubic meters of natural gas from the Lunskoye unified onshore technological complex to a pipe branch-off leading to the Ilyinskoye site where Rosneft plans to build an LNG plant.

In June, Gazprom denied Rosneft access to the Sakhalin-2 pipeline, saying there is no free capacity.