Russia to boost LNG supplies to India in 2016

Russia will significantly boost supplies of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to India in 2016, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday. "Gazprom has signed the memoranda covering major supplies of LNG to India with several Indian companies," Medvedev told Russian and Indian businessmen during the meeting. Alexei Miller, CEO of Russian gas giant Gazprom, said in November that the company would take India's growing demand for LNG into account in its plans to build export facilities under the Eastern Gas Program. India's gas consumption is projected to increase 70 percent by 2020. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said during the meeting that Indian companies were interested in oil and gas projects in Russia. India's ONGC oil and gas company is in talks with Russia's largest independent gas producer Novatek to participate in the Yamal LNG project. The project, being implemented by Novatek and France's Total, will produce liquefied natural gas on the Yamal Peninsula in the Russian Arctic at an estimated cost of $15-20 billion. It will see development of the giant Yuzhno-Tambeiskoye gas condensate field and the construction of an LNG plant. Novatek also plans to build a sea port in the town of Sabetta in Yamal and will construct an ice-class tanker fleet. ONGC also has 20 percent interest in the Sakhalin-1 project, whose reserves are estimated at about 307 million tons of oil (2.3 billion barrels) and 485 billion cubic meters of gas (17 trillion cubic feet).