Russian oil major Rosneft could build its own liquefied natural gas plant in the far east, apart from its planned facility in partnership with ExxonMobil, according to Rosneft Vice President Vlada Rusakova.
The executive added on Thursday that the most economic model for monetizing Russian natural gas remained doing so within the Exxon joint venture plan.
The suggestion from the upper echelons of the state-run company comes just as it confirms the sale of a 20 percent stake of subsidiary Verkhnechyonskneftegaz to Beijing Gas.
President Vladimir Putin is currently strengthening relations with China, as it continues a geopolitical struggle against the United States stemming from allegations against Moscow of meddling in the 2016 presidential elections.
Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin has said he plans to make his company the third largest producer of natural gas in the world. Country-wise, Qatar and Australia occupy the top two spots on the world's largest LNG exporter list. The U.S. is vying to take third place by next year if all goes according to the EIA's plan.
Russia's other major state gas player, Gazprom, is in talks with major operators to supply additional volumes of natural gas to the UK, the firm's deputy chief executive Alexander Medvedev told Bloomberg in an interview published last Friday.
The UK aims to shut coal-fired plants by 2025, while its biggest supplier of energy to residents, Centrica, has just decided to close the country's largest gas storage facility.
"We see an appetite from major players in the U.K. for additional volume of contracted gas," Medvedev told Bloomberg, but did not go into details on the talks.
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Commenting on Gazprom's pitch to sell more natural gas to the UK, Nick Campbell, an energy risk manager at Inspired Energy Plc in Preston, England, told Bloomberg:
"Russian pipeline gas would offer greater flexibility than LNG delivery with gas field production being able to flex to meet demand quicker than sending a tanker from the U.S. East Coast and/or Qatar."
By Zainab Calcuttawala for Oilprice.com
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Zainab Calcuttawala is an American journalist based in Morocco. She completed her undergraduate coursework at the University of Texas at Austin (Hook’em) and reports on… More
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