Russia diversifies gas exports

By Vestnik Kavkaza

The sanctions launched against Russia by the EU due to its position on the Ukrainian issue won’t spread to the energy sphere, as they could hurt not only Moscow, but also the EU.

The deputy Minister for Energy of the RF, Anatoly Yanovsky, thinks that it is not constructive to communicate in the regime of mutual sanctions: “Whom has the international society ever launched sanctions against? The South African Republic suffered sanctions aimed against apartheid. However, due to the sanctions, the SAR was the first country in the world to learn how to produce fuel oil from coal and all chemical products. Later the technology was successfully used in the USA, France and China. But the sanctions didn’t influence apartheid. Today there are sanctions against Iran, but it is developing. Tension is growing around Europe – Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria, and Ukraine. The tension is connected with directions of energy resources’ flows to the EU countries.”

Even though the European Union will remain the biggest consumer of Russian gas, its plans to reject Russian energy resources in the medium-term prospect make Russia diversify its gas exports. According to experts, in the next 20 years the growth of demand for energy resources will rise by 85% in the Asian-Pacific Region, where gas prices are higher than in Europe even today.

At the moment the contract for gas exports to China is 98% ready. According to Yanovsky, the deal can be completed ahead of Putin’s visit to China. “It is the first project in the modern history of Russian-Chinese relations, which is connected with construction of an oil pipeline system. At the moment we are discussing a project on gas pipeline system construction – we didn’t have it even in Soviet times. Nobody has ever talked about such wide-scale exploration of Eastern Siberia, Yakutia or the Far East to provide an opportunity for oil and gas fields and sales of raw materials from the fields to the East. It is a difficult task, and negotiations have been lasting for many years. They demand exploration of fields, their exploitation, preparation, establishing of infrastructure – all these processes need decades to be fulfilled.”