Russia’s Rosneft PJSC aims to develop new natural gas reserves regardless of whether the Kremlin allows the company to export the fuel through pipelines.

“We will produce gas at Rospan and Kharampur-Neftegaz irrespective of the export potential,” First Vice President Didier Casimiro told reporters, referring to the company’s two greenfield sites in western Siberia. 

Russia’s largest oil producer is targeting 100 billion cubic meters of gas output in 2025, VTB Capital analysts said earlier this month following a meeting with Rosneft executives. If pipeline gas exports are allowed, the Russian producer could access the markets of energy-hungry Europe, which has been suffering its worst supply crunch in decades. 

State-controlled Gazprom PJSC currently has a monopoly on exports of pipeline gas from Russia. Yet President Vladimir Putin has ordered the government, Gazprom and Rosneft to prepare a joint proposal by March 1 on potentially sending some of Rosneft’s gas abroad, according to Interfax. 

Rosneft “retains hopes of exporting gas to both Europe and China by obtaining access to Gazprom’s pipelines, and LNG from the Vostok project” on the Taymyr peninsula, BCS Global Markets analyst Ron Smith said following a call with the Russian producer. But shipments to Europe and China are “relatively low-probability,” he said.

Small Share

Flows from Rosneft’s export pilot project would reach around 10 billion cubic meters, a mere fraction of Gazprom’s shipments to countries outside the former Soviet Union, which last year exceeded 185 billion cubic meters. The volume would also be just a small share of Rosneft’s gas production, which reached almost 65 billion cubic meters in 2021.

Rosneft has been trying to get a toehold on pipeline shipments for years, and revived its plans in 2021 as Europe’s energy crisis unfolded. Additional Russian volumes could close Europe’s supply-and-demand gap, and allow it to consume cleaner gas instead of coal, Casimiro told Vedomosti in December.

Russian law allows independent producers to export liquefied natural gas under certain conditions. Rosneft and its Sakhalin 1 partners, including Exxon Mobil Corp., are seeking to build a plant in Russia’s Far East with a capacity of 6.2 million metric tons of LNG per year. The new facility could start production in the next six years. 

Rosneft is also developing plans for the Taymyr LNG and Kara LNG plants in the Arctic, which could come online between 2030 and 2035.