The State Duma adopted a law on the export of LNG from northern fields – Kommersant

The State Duma adopted in the third final reading law, allowing the export of liquefied natural and associated gas (LNG) from areas located north of 67 degrees north latitude. Among them are deposits located in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Nenets, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. The new norm will affect companies with state participation of more than 50%, including 36 Rosneft fields in these regions.

According to the explanatory note to the project, the liberalization of LNG from these fields is necessary because they are “significantly remote” from the Unified Gas Supply System (UGSS), which means that monetization of gas from them is “economically feasible only through the production of LNG.”

The law was introduced by the government on March 9, 2023. In April, Deputy Minister of Energy Anastasia Bondarenko, in a conversation with Interfax said that the adopted law “essentially expands and provides for the granting of export rights” to Rosneft. Mrs. Bondarenko explained the bill by saying that the list of fields owned by Rosneft has expanded to 36 fields in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the Nenets and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug.

Among Russian companies, the right to export LNG is held by Gazprom, Gazprom Export, Gazprom Gas Oil Product Holding, Rosneft, as well as NOVATEK subsidiaries – Yamal LNG, Arctic LNG 1, Arctic LNG 2 and “Arctic LNG 3”.

As Kommersant previously wrote, Gazprom’s first LNG plant (MOEX: GAZP), built by the company from scratch – Port LNG in the Baltic – was forced to radically reconsider its marketing strategy in the first year of its operation. Although sales were initially focused on North-Western Europe, the situation in Ukraine forced the redirection of cargo to Turkey and Greece.

Read more about this in the material “Gazprom has added Baltic gas to Southern Europe”.

Polina Motyzlevskaya