Oil & Gas Innovation Summer 2020 Digital | Page 30

MIDSTREAM & PIPELINES
Interview with Alexey Miller, Chairman of
Gazprom Management Committee
Mr. Miller, the outcomes of Gazprom’s Shareholders Meeting were announced today. Could you
please tell us what are your five highlights from last year?
It was an extremely eventful year for Gazprom. If you want me to choose just five highlights, I would
certainly start with the development of the resource base. We expanded our capacities at the new gas
production center in Yamal, which is of key importance to our country. In 2019, we followed up the
development of the Bovanenkovskoye field by starting to develop the Kharasaveyskoye field, which is
located farther north and is unique in terms of reserves.
second highlight was the successful
A operation in the autumn/winter season.
Our performance was confident as usual, thanks
in large part to underground storage facilities.
In 2019, we brought their deliverability to an alltime
record of 843.3 million cubic meters per
day. As a result, the reliability of our gas supplies
in winter reached a new level.
Clearly, a third highlight goes to our projects
in external markets. We enhanced our export
potential and launched not one but two new
export corridors – TurkStream and Power of
Siberia. This means even more reliable supplies
to the West in parallel with the implementation
of long-term strategic agreements with China in
the East.
Russian gas processing projects are the fourth
highlight. Their significance for Gazprom has
been growing tremendously in recent times.
Last year, we passed the halfway point in the
construction of the Amur Gas Processing Plant
and kicked off the project in Ust-Luga. Both of
those facilities will join the ranks of the largest
facilities in the world. I would also like to single
out the successful project finance deal for the
Amur GPP. The EUR 11.4 billion transaction is
the largest deal in the history of Gazprom.
My fifth and, I suppose, last highlight is our
financial performance. Gazprom remains steady
in its work. The Company is very durable,
as evidenced by our dividends We are going
to pay out RUB 360.8 billion, essentially the
record-breaking level of last year, despite the
challenging situation that is currently facing the
global economy at large and the energy sector
in particular.
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Has this challenging situation affected the
Company’s projects in any way? What are
the current plans and what is Gazprom
working on?
Gazprom has a clearly outlined goal-setting
system. Among our goals is the annual
replenishment of the resource base. Thanks to
geological exploration activities, our reserve
replacement ratio consistently exceeds 1. It
has been like this for the past 15 years, and it
will remain so in 2020. Yamal accounts for the
bulk of the new reserves. This year has already
seen a discovery of another major field in the
region, which we named 75 Years of Victory.
At present, Gazprom’s investment activity
is primarily focused on Yamal and the East.
In Yamal, we continue the pre-development
of the Kharasaveyskoye field: in June, as
planned, we started production drilling there.
Recently, we began building a comprehensive
gas treatment unit. We welded and laid
one-fifth of the connecting gas pipeline to
Bovanenkovo. As early as 2023, first gas from
the field will be fed into the Unified Gas
Supply System.
We have a very heavy workload at the
Kovyktinskoye field in the Irkutsk Region.
We continue to build wells. This year, we are
starting to construct the first CGTU and the
section of Power of Siberia stretching from
Kovyktinskoye to the Chayandinskoye field.
Active work is being done at the Sakhalin gas
production center: this year, two wells will be
hooked up at the Kirinskoye field.
As our geographic reach keeps expanding,
the gas we are extracting keeps changing in
composition. We are producing increasingly
more multi-component, ethane-containing
gas. This refers to not only the new eastern
fields – Chayandinskoye and Kovyktinskoye
– but also the deeper-lying deposits in the
Nadym-Pur-Taz region of Western Siberia.
This is the tangible reason for the significant
enhancement of our processing activities.
In the East, we are building the Amur
Gas Processing Plant. In the West, we are
constructing the complex in Ust-Luga. These
facilities will be among the largest in the world.
Moreover, the Amur GPP will be the biggest
global producer of helium, while the complex
in Ust-Luga will have the largest output of
liquefied natural gas in Northwestern Europe.
And, of course, processing generates added
value, which means a sizable additional
monetary flow.
As regards our work in the European market,
we continue providing reliable gas deliveries
to our consumers. We hold our position as
the largest exporter there. The period the
gas market is going through today is not an
easy one. There are difficulties for all of its
participants, but we have a larger reserve to
withstand any challenges. Gazprom has a
whole range of significant advantages, such as