Russia 10M Gas Export Revenue Up 31%
Russia exported 183.6bn standard m3 of gas (including LNG) during January-October 2018, up 7% year on year, while its value grew by 30.9% to $39.9bn, Russia's federal customs service said December 7.
The statistics did not separate piped gas and LNG export figures. However, piped gas export monopoly Gazprom’s sales to non-former Soviet Union countries were 164.1bn m3 in ten months, up 4.4% year on year. Gazprom’s total piped gas exports were 194.4bn (Russian) m3 in 2017 and were expected to reach 200bn m3 this year.
Alexander Gladkov who heads the energy ministry’s oil and gas production and transportation department also said Dec.7 that Russia’s 2018 gas production is expected to exceed 700bn m3, up 1.3% year on year, while LNG production would amount to almost 20mn metric tons.
Russia exported 15.5bn m3 (11.3mn mt) LNG in 2017, almost all of which came from the Sakhalin LNG venture in which Gazprom has 50% equity. This year’s overall Russian LNG exports are higher because Novatek started the Yamal LNG first train in December 2017 followed by its second and third trains in July and November 2018 respectively, which means Yamal LNG’s production capacity today is 16.5mn mt/yr.
In 2017, Gazprom increased gas production by 12.4% to 471bn m3. Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said in October that the company in 2018 could approach production of 500bn m3.
Gazprom said its LNG traded volume in 2017 was 3.34mn mt (4.46bn m3), of which 46% from Sakhalin with the rest bought in; its biggest market was Japan, followed by China, Taiwan and Kuwait.