Saudi oil giant Aramco could invest in liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects in Russia in the future, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said at a Saudi-Russian investment forum in Riyadh on Monday.
"Now we have invited our Saudi colleagues to develop our projects for the production of liquefied natural gas in the north of Russia, we have a successful Yamal LNG project. We believe that Saudi Aramco will be one of the investors in future projects," Novak said, as carried by Russia's news agency TASS.
The Russian energy minister was attending the forum which is part of a landmark visit of Russia's President Vladimir Putin to Saudi Arabia.
Putin is holding talks on Monday with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, with whom he is discussing cooperation to stabilize the price of oil, economy, trade, and investments. Putin is also holding today a separate meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Over the past few years, the meetings between Putin and the crown prince at various international events have served as a kind of pre-approval of the next moves of the OPEC+ coalition.
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Speaking at the Saudi-Russian forum today, Novak said that thanks to the cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Russia, and by extension between OPEC and the non-OPEC producers part of the pact, the parties will manage to keep a long-term stability on the oil market.
In the LNG sector, Russian companies plan to build more projects in the future, and these could be the target of Saudi investments.
Russia's largest independent natural gas producer, Novatek, expects its recently added gas field licenses to provide enough gas to warrant the construction of a third large LNG plant, its CEO Leonid Mikhelson said last month. Novatek, which already exports LNG from the Yamal LNG plant, has just given the go-ahead to its second large LNG project, Arctic LNG 2 on the Gydan Peninsula.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More