VIENNA, June 4. /TASS/. Novatek’s Murmansk LNG project, which unlike other company’s LNG projects will be connected to Gazprom’s Unified Gas Supply System (UGSS), looks promising and expedient, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Sunday.

"It is being considered in detail. I have held a corresponding meeting and issued an instruction to consider this idea. In general, it is in conformity with our strategy for the development of the production of liquefied natural gas and in the current environment it is absolutely expedient for development of the Artic and the LNG sector," he said.

Russia's biggest independent gas producer Novatek said in late May that it had kicked off a new large-capacity LNG project, the Murmansk LNG. It said it was working on technical requirements for power supplies and was expecting Gazprom to issue requirements for connecting to its Unified Gas Supply System. Thus, the project requires a new gas pipeline with a design capacity of up to 30 billion cubic meters of gas a year.

The Kommersant daily reported, iting a number of sources, that Novatek planned to build an LNG plant with a capacity of 20.4 million tons a year in the Murmansk region. The plant will have three liquifying lines with a capacity of 6.8 million tons each. The first two lines may be commissioned in late 2027, and the third line - in late 2029.

The Murmansk LNG project will be Novatek’s forth after the operating Yamal LNG (17.4 million) tons a year, the Arctic LNG-2 (20 million tons), which is under construction, and the Ob LPG, which is to be commissioned in 2026-2027. According to the newspaper’s sources, the company plans to kick off the construction of the Murmansk LNG’s first line at the Center for Construction of Large Offshore Facilities (CCLOF) in the village of Belokamenka in the Murmansk Region in mid-2024.