Counter-order comrades: Yamal first

As for December 2008, the financial crisis has forced a reconsideration of Gazprom´s Artic sea projects. The plummeted oil price is making unfeasible the complex extraction and piping facilities that were just in September due and ready for approval. The list goes from the Barents sea projects (Shtokman, Prirazlomnoe, Nucula) to the terrestrial explorations on the continent. Credit crunch means that investments must be workable at favourable conditions for Gazprom in terms of technology used, location, entity f the investment. The optimum seems to be not to rely on international partners. Let´s take a rough look at the two:

Shtokman field – Barents sea

Located north to the Kola Peninsula, it is deemed to have an enormous potential, as the planned 72 wells testify. Alas, a 50-60 USD oil price would make reason of it, and currently the price is below 40 USD pro barrel. The offshore nature of the drilling and the current Gazprom doldrums are handicaps that must be rightly explained to the Shtokman partners Total and StatOilHydro. According to Vedemosti “with estimated costs per well amounting to 100 million USD and leasing of equipment costing about 400.000 USD per day [...] Shtokman drilling costs alone to as much as 5.6-7.2 billion USD. The first field is expected to cost 15 Billion USD, 70% of which will be lended money, according to Shtokman Development Company Yuri Komarov.

Bovanenkovo field - Yamal peninsula

It is an onshore field east in north-Western Siberia. It is deemed to be a rich field (115 billion cubic meters), the first of a series of drilling that will eventually reach 250 billion cubic meters, according to estimates. The project will cost 8 Billion USD, and is comprehensive of a pipeline facility.

Although no precedence has been given in the latest Company meeting on December 23^rd, Gazprom´s choice might well be for Yamal. According to the Gazprom corporate site “gas transportation priorities are: construction of the Bovanenkovo – Ukhta, Ukhta – Torzhok trunkline systems, the Gryazovets – Vyborg, Pochinki – Gryazovets, Murmansk – Volkhov gas pipelines, and the SRTO – Torzhok gas trunkline.” This means Yamal first. The second in line, the Gryazovets-Vyborg pipeline, is to serve the Nord Stream project. It is designed to link the Yuzhno-Russkoye field to the Vyborg facility and then to Nord Stream. However recent technological developments and sudden greed for cash seem to put on hold the environment-problematic underwater pipeline project and push for a LNG facility in Kaliningrad, due-completion in 2011.