Gazprom to give Siberian ethane to Sibur

Gazprom has come to an agreement with Sibur on joint processing of Eastern Siberian gas: the companies will construct a gas-chemical complex, where impurities will be isolated from methane and ethane will be processed into polymers. But, according to experts, the project prospects will depend on conditions of Gazprom’s gas supplies to China, Kommersant writes.

On Friday, the Gaprom’s CEO Alexei Miller and the Sibur’s General Director Dmitry Konov signed a memorandum on the creation of a gas-processing plant and a gas-chemical complex in Belogorsk (the Amur region). The complex will process compound gas from Yakutia and the Irkutsk region (particularly, from the Chayandinskoye and Kovyktinskoye fields). Gazprom plans to construct the gas-processing plant with capacity of up to 60 billion cubic meters of methane per year in Belogorsk – ethane, helium and other components will be isolated from gas. The Sibur’s gas-chemical complex will produce monomers and polymers from ethane. The memorandum determined ethane pricing mechanisms and synchronization of the projects. It’s scheduled to start to construct the gas-processing plant in the third quarter of 2015 and to complete it in 2025; the investments into the complex are estimated at 620 billion rubles.