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Foster Wheeler gets Russian liquefied natural gas contract

ZUG, Switzerland, Nov. 4 (UPI) — Engineering company Foster Wheeler said Monday it was selected to help with initial developments of a Russian liquefied natural gas project for the Far East. Foster Wheeler, which has headquarters in Switzerland, said it secured one of two contracts from Russian energy company Rosneft and its U.S. counterpart Exxon Mobil to take on the initial front-end engineering design work for the project. Rosneft said it aims to build a facility that draws on the natural gas reserves on Sakhalin Island. The plant will be designed to process 5 million tons of LNG per year, officials said. Rosneft announced in September it chose CB&I UK as a recipient of a front-end engineering and design contract for the LNG project. “With our initial front-end engineering and design contractors on board now we will see the project begin to take shape in a matter of months,” […]

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Ukraine minister: Naftogaz debt to Gazprom to be resolved Monday

KIEV, Ukraine, Nov. 4 (UPI) — A dispute over late payment of $882 million owed by Ukraine’s Naftogaz to Russia’s Gazprom will be resolved Monday, a Ukrainian minister said. Minister of Energy and Mines Eduard Stavytskyy told Ukrainian broadcaster Channel 5 Saturday during a soccer game between ministers and members of Parliament the problem of debts for Russian gas will be hammered out Monday. He said the talks between Naftogaz and Gazprom are in the the final stages, but wouldn’t reveal the nature of any of the negotiations, or if the government will step in to provide financial help for the Ukrainian company. “I want to emphasize that the issue is actually solved and on Monday you will learn the details,” Stavytskyy said. He said last week he had given the two energy companies until Thursday to come to an agreement on the debt, but that deadline was pushed […]

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Russia breaks oil output record

Page added on November 3, 2013 Russian oil output, the largest in the world, reached 10.59 million bpd (barrels per day) in October, setting the record for the country’s post-Soviet period, Energy Ministry data showed. The landmark was reached due to Rosneft increasing production at the Vankor field in the Krasnoyarsk Region, the Vedomosti paper reports. The output at the field was 18.3 million tons last year, with the company planning Vankor reach 25 million tons annually. Another influential factor is the larger amount of Gazprom-produced gas condensate, which has now reached 350,000 bpd. The country’s total output in October reached 44,773 million tons, which is 1.3 percent higher than during the same period last year. According to the International Energy Agency, Russia’s all-time production of black gold reached its peak at 11.41 million bpd in 1988, when it was still part of the Soviet Union. The production of […]

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Russian PM plays down 'gas war' talk, warns Ukraine on EU

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said he saw no reason for Moscow to cut gas supplies to Ukraine over an unpaid bill for now, playing down talk of an imminent "gas war" that might disrupt flows to Europe. In an interview with Reuters, he denied Russia’s demands for payment had anything to do with opposition to Ukraine signing agreements with the European Union this month which would mark a historic shift away from former imperial master Moscow. But the 48-year-old ex-president said the "special relationship" between the two former Soviet republics would change if Ukraine moved closer to Europe and that Kiev should no longer come to Moscow seeking loans. Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom said on Tuesday that Ukraine, which is dependent on supplies of Russian gas, had failed to settle a $882 million bill for August deliveries and demanded it be paid urgently. Medvedev […]

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Russian PM plays down ‘gas war’ talk, warns Ukraine on EU

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said he saw no reason for Moscow to cut gas supplies to Ukraine over an unpaid bill for now, playing down talk of an imminent "gas war" that might disrupt flows to Europe. In an interview with Reuters, he denied Russia’s demands for payment had anything to do with opposition to Ukraine signing agreements with the European Union this month which would mark a historic shift away from former imperial master Moscow. But the 48-year-old ex-president said the "special relationship" between the two former Soviet republics would change if Ukraine moved closer to Europe and that Kiev should no longer come to Moscow seeking loans. Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom said on Tuesday that Ukraine, which is dependent on supplies of Russian gas, had failed to settle a $882 million bill for August deliveries and demanded it be paid urgently. Medvedev […]

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Russia to Transfer Detained Greenpeace Activists

MOSCOW — Russia, unexpectedly and without explanation, is preparing to transfer 30 crew members of a Greenpeace International ship from a detention center in the far northern city of Murmansk to a jail in St. Petersburg, the organization said Friday night. The reason for transferring the detainees, who have been held since their ship was seized on Sept. 19 after an open seas protest against oil drilling in the Arctic, was not immediately clear, and a spokesman for Russia’s prison system declined to comment. In a statement , Greenpeace said it also did not know the reason for the transfers, which were expected to begin soon. The move came after the authorities in Murmansk completed charging the 30 people who were aboard the ship, the Arctic Sunrise, with hooliganism, a crime punishable by up to seven years in prison. Greenpeace noted earlier on Friday that, technically, all remain charged […]

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Gazprom eyes gas foundation in Far East market

MOSCOW, Nov. 1 (UPI) — Russian gas company Gazprom said Friday it was teaming up with gas processing company SIBUR to build a processing plant in the Far East. “Gazprom is planning to construct a gas processing plant in Belogorsk [near northeast China] with the annual capacity of up to 2.1 trillion cubic feet, where ethane and other valuable components will be stripped from natural gas,” the company said in a statement. “SIBUR, in its turn, intends to create a gas chemical complex technologically connected with the gas processing plant for the purpose of processing ethane.” Gazprom provided no financial terms for the deal. The company said the partnership would draw gas from the Chayandinskoye and Kovyktinskoye fields, which contain a combined 95 trillion cubic feet of estimated gas reserves. Gazprom has focused its efforts on meeting the energy demands of expanding Asian economies. “The joint activities will result […]

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Activists Feel Powerful Wrath as Russia Guards Its Arctic Claims

MOSCOW — Gizem Akhan, 24, was about to begin her final year studying the culinary arts at Yeditepe University in Istanbul. Tomasz Dziemianczuk, 36, took a vacation from his job as a cultural adviser at the University of Gdansk in Poland that has now unexpectedly turned into an unpaid leave of absence. Dmitri Litvinov, 51, is a veteran activist who as a child spent four years in Siberian exile after his father, Pavel, took part in the Red Square protest against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. “I didn’t expect my son to get in their clutch,” the elder Mr. Litvinov said in a telephone interview from Irvington, N.Y., where he settled to teach physics in nearby Tarrytown after being expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974. Dmitri Litvinov and the others are just three of the 30 people aboard a Greenpeace International ship, the Arctic Sunrise, who […]

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Russia's Gazprom says no to shale natural gas production

MOSCOW, Oct. 30 (UPI) — Russian energy company Gazprom said it wasn’t ready to examine the shale natural gas potential in the country because of abundant conventional reserves. The board of directors at Gazprom met Tuesday in Moscow to survey the prospects for shale natural gas production. “The meeting participants affirmed that at the moment shale gas production in Russia would be inexpedient due to the abundance of conventional gas reserves with their recovery cost being considerably lower than the estimated cost of shale gas production,” the company said in a statement. “In addition, it was pointed out that shale gas production was related to considerable environmental risks.” Last year, the United States produced an average 25.7 billion cubic feet per day in shale natural gas. The U.S. Energy Information Administration said this month the United States passed Russia as the world’s leading natural gas producer thanks in part […]

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Russia’s Gazprom says no to shale natural gas production

MOSCOW, Oct. 30 (UPI) — Russian energy company Gazprom said it wasn’t ready to examine the shale natural gas potential in the country because of abundant conventional reserves. The board of directors at Gazprom met Tuesday in Moscow to survey the prospects for shale natural gas production. “The meeting participants affirmed that at the moment shale gas production in Russia would be inexpedient due to the abundance of conventional gas reserves with their recovery cost being considerably lower than the estimated cost of shale gas production,” the company said in a statement. “In addition, it was pointed out that shale gas production was related to considerable environmental risks.” Last year, the United States produced an average 25.7 billion cubic feet per day in shale natural gas. The U.S. Energy Information Administration said this month the United States passed Russia as the world’s leading natural gas producer thanks in part […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple