MOSCOW, June 18. /ITAR-TASS/. Russian energy giant Gazprom will resume talks with China on gas supplies along the western route and liquefied natural gas (LNG) delivery, Gazprom board member Alexander Medvedev told a media briefing on Wednesday.
“We do not refuse possible LNG supplies to China despite signing of the contract on pipeline gas supplies,” he said. This is supplies from projects Vladivostok-LNG and Sakhalin-2.
Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) have signed a contract for Russian pipeline gas delivery to China on May 21. The contract was concluded for 30 years and envisages delivery of 38 billion cubic meters of gas annually. The contract value totals $400 billion.
Chinese companies are interested in taking part in the constriction of the 15 million ton LNG plant in near Vladivostok in Russia’s Far East, Medvedev added. “Probably before the end of the year, we will announce the participants,” he said.
Medvedev also said that China will make an advance payment under the current contract before the supplies start in four or six years, if Chinese infrastructure is not ready to take gas.
Negotiations on the construction of the Trans-Korean pipeline are called off, he said.
“At the moment, there are no political conditions to implement the project, but we are still interested in it. If conditions in North Korea and South Korea are created, we will resume the talks. At the moment they are not held,” he said.
Gazprom has long planned to build a pipeline via North Korea to South Korea with a view to shipping 10 billion cubic meters of gas annually.
Moscow has been trying to diversify its energy sales to Asia away from Europe, which, in its turn, wants to cut its dependence on oil and gas from Russia.
Gazprom has also extended an LNG contract with Indian company Gail for 25 years and will sell 3-3.5 million tons of the gas annually to it with a possibility of an increase, Medvedev said.