Arctic Russia

shtokman doubts

In developing plans for pipelines and oil and gas terminals it appears as though Gazprom is pressing ahead with the development of the Shtokman field in the Barents Sea despite some ‘foreign’ doubts about its profitability in the short-to-mid-term gas market.   According to this report the head of Gazprom states that the ’проект будет обязательно реализован’ – i.e., ‘the project will be realized’ but it appears as though the big foreign investors are not so sure.  News.ru suggests that gazprom is ‘ готов принимать единоличные решения в рамках проекта’ – ‘prepared to take individual solutions to the project’ and reports that there are differences in the respective approaches of Gazprom and the foreign companies with respect to the technological aspects of the project, with Gazpron announcing specific solutions to the problem of the location of the gas terminals mentioned above (the specifics of this are not clear to me).  Foreign investors, however, are holding off on decisions about investments in phase two of the project until at least the end of the year and свбодная пресса also links this to competition from Qatar and shale gas from the USA.  It concludes its analysis with the statement that links the fate of this project to Russia’s geopolitical position - ‘Это называется, доигрались в энергетическую сверхдержаву’ – i.e., ‘this is called an end to the energy superpower.’