Russian energy giant Gazprom on Tuesday announced it was aggressively expanding its capital investment plan for 2011 to 40 billion dollars.
The money will allow the firm to accelerate high-priority gas development and transportation projects in the Arctic, eastern Siberian and the Pacific Ocean regions, a company statement said.
Gazprom had planned some 25.2 billion dollars of capital investments in 2011, but continued high demand for gas produced by the firm had brought substantial extra income, the statement said.
President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have called the expanding access to the country’s vast energy resources a top national priority, and have said Gazprom – a state-owned company – must take a lead role in pushing the development.
Speaking in the Sakhalin provincial capital Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Medvedev said Gazprom gas delivered by a future trans-Korea pipeline, as well as liquid gas sent by ship, would eventually provide South Korea with some 12 billion cubic metres of Russian natural gas annually – roughly one third of Seoul’s current consumption.
‘It (a Russian pipeline crossing North Korea) would be profitable,’ Medvedev said in comments reported by the Russian news agency Interfax. ‘But more discussions need to take place.’
Gazprom’s biggest ongoing projects include exploration and drilling of massive reserves believed to lie under the Yamal peninsula on the Arctic Ocean shore, expansion of production in east Siberia’s Yakutia province, and offshore drilling and production of liquid gas from fields in the Sea of Japan.
Gazrpom is the world’s largest natural gas producer, Russia’s biggest corporation and a key Kremlin asset. Medvedev, prior to going into politics, served for eight years as Gazprom’s chairman.
