Shell has plans to ink a deal with the Russian gas company Gazprom sometime this week. The deal is related to Gazprom's plan to begin a liquefied natural gas project at the port of Ust-Luga in the Baltic Sea.
Yuri Ushakov, a Kremlin aide, confirmed the deal on Tuesday. Shell was reported to be interested in picking up 25 to 30 percent of the project.
That project is expected to include a two-train LNG plant as well as a pipeline that will connect with the Gazprom network. The plant could be finished by the year 2021. Gazprom plans to share the $10-billion-dollar cost, along with the risks with Gazprombank.
A floating storage and regasification unit is slated for Kaliningrad. The unit will be able to store 170,000 cubic meters and have a regasification capacity of 13.2 million cubic meters of gas per day. Ushakov noted that the total capacity of the trains is estimated to be approximately 10 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas per year, with the potential to expand to 15 million tonnes.
Ushakov said that President Vladimir Putin will be meeting with Royal Dutch Shell CEO Ben van Beurden during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, in order to discuss Shell's operations in the market. The meeting will not be an official part of the Forum. Ushakov stated that at the Forum, there will also be documents signed between Rosneft and Italian energy company Eni, and on another deal between Novatek and Saipem regarding cooperative agreements in LNG development. No other details were available.
Antonio Fallico, the chairman of Banca Intesa, which is a Russian subsidiary of the Sanapaolo Group, an Italian lender, and who is also the president of the Conoscere Eurasia Association said that "significant contacts and agreements that would be worth in his words :a few billion euros" would be signed during the Forum.
By Lincoln Brown for Oilprice.com
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