Oleg Aksyutin, Deputy Chairman of the Management Committee – Head of Department at Gazprom, and Igor Kobzev, Governor of the Irkutsk Region, had an extended meeting in Irkutsk today.
The meeting reviewed, among other things, the ongoing efforts for creating the Irkutsk gas production center. It was noted that the work to prepare the Kovyktinskoye field – the basis for the Irkutsk center – for full-scale production is going on schedule. Development drilling continues, the filling works are underway for the top-priority well clusters and two comprehensive gas treatment units, and access roads are being built at the moment.
In late 2022, the Power of Siberia gas trunkline will start receiving gas from the Kovyktinskoye field. To achieve that, Gazprom is constructing a section of Power of Siberia stretching from Kovyktinskoye to the Chayandinskoye field in Yakutia. As of now, a total of 98 kilometers (12 per cent of the section’s length) out of the 803 kilometers of the linear part has been welded, laid, and backfilled.
Background
December 2, 2019, marked the start of first-ever pipeline supplies of Russian gas to China via the eastern route, i.e. the Power of Siberia gas trunkline.
By the start of supplies via the route, Gazprom built a section of Power of Siberia stretching for about 2,200 kilometers from Yakutia to the Chinese border near Blagoveshchensk, as well as completed the construction of the border-adjacent Atamanskaya compressor station and a cross-border section with a two-string submerged crossing under the Amur River.
Currently, Power of Siberia receives gas from Chayandinskoye, the largest field in Yakutia (1.2 trillion cubic meters of recoverable gas reserves).
Kovyktinskoye is the largest field in eastern Russia: its recoverable gas reserves amount to 1.8 trillion cubic meters.
