Content №1 от 2017
Key Development Problems of the Power of Siberia Project
The paper examines the problems linked to the implementation the Power of Siberia project as it pertains to the possibilities of integrated development of mineral resources, including the organization of gas production, petrochemical, oil-and-gas transportation, and helium industries in the eastern regions of Russia. Within the project, we accomplish the following tasks: analyze the natural gas resource base and production in Eastern Siberia and the Sakha Republic (Yakutia); substantiate the development trends for transport infrastructure; point out the key problems associated with the project implementation; consider the feasibility of a public-private partnership. The Power of Siberia project is faced with a few pressing issues. For instance, neither in Russia nor the world, there are extra-long-distance pipelines transporting multicomponent gas. A deliberate reduction in helium concentration will lead to a sharp rise in its release cost, which challenges the entire helium part of the program. Moreover, the modern concept of exploiting gas potential in Eastern Siberia does not involve the Irkutsk processing cluster that already has prominent infrastructure to process hydrocarbon raw materials, human resources, and production capacity, as opposed to an anticipated gas processing plant in Amur Oblast.