The Altai gas pipeline is a projected gas pipeline designed to export natural gas from the Western Siberia region to China. Access to Chinese territory is expected on the section of the Russian-Chinese border between Kazakhstan and Mongolia. The Altai gas pipeline, the scheme of which is given below, will pass through the territories of six Russian subjects of the federation.
Project background
Even in 2004 Gazprom and the Chinese state oil and gas company CNPC reached an agreement on the development of strategic cooperation. Even then, the Chinese were thinking about ways to supply natural gas to their booming market. After all, the growth in gas consumption in their country since the beginning of the 21st century has significantly outpaced the growth in its domestic production.
Current estimates show that by 2020, China will consume more than 300 bcm3 gas, which is three times the current volume of its production (about 100 bcm 3).
First steps
Following the above agreement in March 2006During the visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to the country, a Memorandum on Russian gas supplies to China was signed. It was signed by Alexei Miller, Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee, and Chen Geng, General Director of CNPC. The memorandum determined the timing of the implementation of gas pipelines, volumes and two delivery routes: from Western Siberia - the Altai gas pipeline, from Eastern Siberia - the Power of Siberia gas pipeline.
In the summer of the same 2006, the Coordinating Committee was launched, whose task was to implement the Altai project. In autumn, Gazprom and the government of the Altai Republic, which borders China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, signed a cooperation agreement detailing how the gas pipeline across Altai would be built.
Years of approvals and estimates
However, the project did not move forward easily. Several years were spent on difficult negotiations with Chinese partners to develop a procedure for its financing and to determine the formula for the price of Russian gas. Only in the summer of 2009, a memorandum was signed between Russia and China confirming the achievement of mutual understanding between the parties, and in the summer of the same year, a Framework Agreement was signed between Gazprom and CNPC containing a gas price formula linked to the cost of oil.
The next year, 2010, the same two companies also signed the Extended Basic Conditions for Gas Supplies from Russia to China. It was expected that the export contract would be signed in 2011 and deliveries would begin at the end of 2015. However, this did not happen. Chinese partners acceptedthe decision to limit gas supplies to the eastern route for the time being - Power of Siberia, signing in May 2014 a 30-year contract worth $400 billion. In September of the same 2014, the construction of this gas pipeline began.
What about the Altai gas pipeline? 2014 brought new hope for the revitalization of this project. In November of that year, the leaders of both countries, Russia and China, held regular talks. Based on their results, another memorandum was signed, which recorded the intention of the parties to double the volume of gas supplies to China, the main tool for this was to be the Altai gas pipeline. 2014 and 2015 passed in anticipation of decisive shifts, but so far they have not followed.
Altai gas pipeline: news of recent months
In early September 2015, Alexey Miller said that he expects the signing of a contract for gas exports to China via the western route, which is increasingly called the "Power of Siberia-2", in the spring of next year. However, in the same month, E. Burmistrova, head of the Gazprom-export division, reported that negotiations with the Chinese were going very difficult. And agreement on price, especially given the "dramatic changes in the market", has not yet been reached.
Then the price of oil was fifty dollars a barrel, today it is less than thirty. It is clear that in such conditions it is unlikely that an agreement will be reached until spring if the price of oil continues to fluctuate. In November 2015, the head of the Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation A. Novak said that the slowdown in making a decision on the western route of gas supplies was caused by a decrease ingrowth rates of the Chinese economy. Since then, they have declined further.
Gazprom and CNPC will have to look for a new model for cooperation in the conditions of the collapse of world oil prices. Therefore, the construction of the Altai gas pipeline will be somewhat postponed in terms of time. However, no one is going to put an end to the whole project yet.
Gas main route
The 2,800-kilometer Altai gas pipeline will start from the Purpeyskaya compressor station of the existing Urengoy-Surgut-Chelyabinsk pipeline. It will transport gas from the Nadymskoye and Urengoyskoye fields in Western Siberia.
The total length of the Russian section will be 2,666 km, including 205 kilometers along the lands of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, 325 kilometers along the territory of the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug, 879 kilometers in the Tomsk Region, 244 km in the Novosibirsk Region, 422 km in the Altai Territory and 591 km in the Republic of Altai.
The Kanas mountain pass will become its end point on the territory of Russia. Most of the gas pipeline will be built within the technical corridor of existing pipelines such as Urengoy-Surgut-Chelyabinsk, Northern Tyumen-Surgut-Omsk, Nizhnevartovsk Gas Processing Plant - Parabel - Kuzbass, Novosibirsk - Kuzbass, Novosibirsk - Barnaul and finally Barnaul - Biysk.
In China, the Altai gas pipeline will enter Xinjiang, where it will be connected to the internal West-East gas pipeline.
Technical description
Diameterpipeline will be 1420 mm. The design capacity will be 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year, and the total cost of the entire project is expected to be up to $14 billion. The pipeline will be equipped with the most modern compressor stations. The pipeline will be operated by Tomsktransgaz, a subsidiary of Gazprom.
Criticism of the project
Does everyone in Russia like the Altai project? The gas pipeline is planned to be launched across the Ukok plateau in the Kosh-Agach region of the Altai Republic, bordering China, which is a natural habitat for the snow leopard and other endangered rare species.
Today, on the territory of the Ukok Plateau, the State Institution "Natural Park - Peace Zone Ukok", created and patronized by the authorities of the Altai Republic, operates. The administration of the natural park expresses concern that the construction of the gas pipeline will negatively affect the ecology of this unique corner of nature.
We are talking primarily about the destabilization of permafrost soils, as well as the destabilization of seismic processes (due to drilling) in the zone of 8-9 seismicity.
There are fears that the self-healing of natural bio-complexes disturbed during the construction in the harsh conditions of Ukok may take several decades. Therefore, Altai environmentalists propose to conduct a public environmental review of the project and conduct field studies along the proposed route, and subsequently conduct continuous environmental monitoring of the area.
Is it possiblebypass the Ukok plateau?
This question arose back in 2006 at the stage of initial development of the project. The fact is that the choice of route is limited to a very small section of the Russian-Chinese border of 54 km, which runs along the Kanas mountain pass adjacent to the Ukok plateau.
Defenders of nature immediately had proposals to bypass the plateau through the territories of neighboring states - Kazakhstan or Mongolia. However, these proposals did not find support either in Gazprom, where they said that such a variant of the route would cost significantly more, or in the Russian authorities, whose speaker in 2007 was the then head of the Republic of Altai A. Berdnikov.
He bluntly stated that the route was chosen for political reasons by the country's top leadership, and the "Mongolian" or "Kazakh" route options carry too high political risks.
In the light of the current crisis in relations between Russia and Ukraine, which forced the leadership of Gazprom to declare its intention to stop the transit of Russian gas through the Ukrainian gas transportation system after 2019, the decision of the Russian leadership to lay the Altai gas pipeline route exclusively through its own territory seems prudent.
