Russia: Putin Hosts Meeting on Yamal LNG and Sabetta Port

Late last night Vladimir Putin chaired a meeting on creating modern facilities for the production of liquefied natural gas on the Yamal Peninsula, the Yamal LNG project, and building the Sabetta seaport.

The meeting was attended by Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Sergei Ivanov, presidential aides Andrei Belousov and Igor Levitin, Energy Minister Alexander Novak, Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov, Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoy to the Urals Federal District Igor Kholmanskikh, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Area Governor Dmitry Kobylkin, Deputy Finance Minister Andrei Ivanov, and the CEOs of NOVATEK and Sovcomflot.

“Without any undue exaggeration, the industrial and infrastructural development of the Yamal Peninsula holds national importance. It will allow us to tap the rich – but still inaccessible – deposits here, to create new jobs, industries and hydrocarbon processing centres. In turn, these will act as a major impetus for the socioeconomic development not only of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area, but the entire Urals and Western Siberia. In fact, this development will probably even have important outcomes for the entire country,” stated Putin.

“The Yamal LNG project is also important to us as a successful example of public-private partnership that we must actively replicate. Let me recall that by the beginning of September 2013 private investors had already invested more than 60 billion rubles in the project.

“In turn, public funds are financing a number of infrastructure projects, including Sabetta airport, which is due to open in 2014.

“The federal budget has also set aside nearly 47.3 billion rubles for the construction of a seaport. These funds will finance dredging the waters of the future port in order to create a navigable channel in the Gulf of Ob, something that is already underway. All of this will enable private investors to start building port terminals as of 2014.”

The dredging operations at Sabetta will be carried out by Jan De Nul Group, and two cutter suction dredgers, Niccolo Macchiavelli and Leonardo Da Vinci, two holding dredgers, eight open barge hulls, two motorized flatboats, a hose dredger, a special tug vessel, and a crew rotation boat will be used for running operations in the Gulf of Ob.

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Press Release, September 26, 2013