Russia has proposed building a gas pipeline from Russia’s Far Eastern island Sakhalin to the northernmost Japanese city of Wakkanai on Hokkaido Island and further to the main territory of the country, according to reports.
If the project is implemented, this will be a first gas pipeline linking Japan with another country.
The ideaof a gas pipeline from Russia to Japan has been debated for many years, but has never reached the level of practical talks.
Spending for the pipeline’s construction is evaluated at 600 billion yens (slightly less than US$ 6 billion). Some 20 billion m3/yr would be delivered through the pipeline.
The construction of a gas pipeline between the two countries would likely face many obstacles, including a dispute over islands taken by Russian forces at the end of World War II that has prevented Moscow and Tokyo from signing a formal peace treaty.
Moscow, which is heavily dependent on taxes from oil and gas sales to western Europe, has been trying to shift focus to Asian countries including Japan and China as potential customers for its vast reserves in eastern Siberia.
It has been offering lower priced gas to Japan, which buys about a third of world shipments of liquefied natural gas (LNG), a supercooled form of the fuel.
Japan's imports of LNG have surged in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster of March 2011, which has led to the shutdown of all the country's reactors. Russia supplied almost 10% of Japan's LNG imports last year.
Moscow and Tokyo have been discussing a number of projects involving LNG supplies to Japan from Sakhalin and Vladivostok, but talks have slowed as the Japanese government fell in line with sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine crisis.
Edited from various sources by Elizabeth Corner
Source: Itar Tass, The Moscow Times