PRESS: Norilsk Nickel seeks Ushakovskoye gas field on Taimyr

MOSCOW, Jul 20 (PRIME) -- Norilskgazprom, a unit of Russian metals giant Norilsk Nickel, seeks to get the Ushakovskoye gas field on the Taimyr Peninsula and asks the Energy Ministry to abandon the licensing of the site, business daily Vedomosti reported Monday citing a letter from the company’s CEO Andrei Chistov.

In June, Norilskgazprom sent applications to the Federal Mineral Resources Agency to expand the areas of the Severo-Soleninsky and Pelyatkinsky license blocks, and now it asks the Energy Ministry to exclude the Ushakovskoye field from the perimeter of the new resource and production cluster, the letter said.

The field is strategic for ensuring uninterrupted gas supply to cities and enterprises of the Norilsk industrial region, Chistov wrote.

Now gas supply to the region is provided by four fields: Pelyatkinskoye, Yuzhno-Soleninskoye, Severo-Soleninskoye and Messoyakhskoye, their total production is around 3 billion cubic meters per year, which covers the demand for fuel in the Norilsk region.

But, according to Chistov, the need for gas in the region will increase to 4.5 billion cubic meters by 2030. He calculated that with a production level of even 8 billion cubic meters per year, the resources of the existing fields may not be enough, which will cause a gas shortage in Norilsk by 2038.

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