President Vladimir Putin on Thursday refrained from "direct instructions" to Gazprom to supply gas to the petrochemical complex projected by Rosneft in Primorye for the Eastern Petrochemical Company (VNKhK). Now the project lacks 2.3 billion cubic meters of gas, and Rosneft has long and unsuccessfully tried to achieve tons of supplies of raw materials to Gazprom. Public appeal to Vladimir Putin by the head of Rosneft Igor Sechin and presidential aide Andrei Belousov did not help: the head of state in fact only entrusted the White House and its administration with an almost impossible task - to establish a dialogue between state-owned companies.

Vladimir Putin at a meeting on the implementation of major investment projects in the Far East instructed the government and the economic bloc of his administration to establish contact between Rosneft and Gazprom in order to solve the gas shortage problem for Rosneft's VNCP. "I ask you to conduct this work between the companies and reach a decision," Mr. Putin said. "But does Gazprom need to be given direct instructions from the government to do this or that?" I think it is inappropriate. " This replica, which in effect prohibits officials from somehow coercing Gazprom to give gas to VNKhK, responded to a proposal by presidential aide Andrei Belousov (head of Rosneft's board of directors) to discuss the assignment to the government for gas supplies to the VNKhK. "It presupposed a period until March 1, but has not yet been executed," Mr. Belousov said.

In turn, the head of Rosneft Igor Sechin warned that Gazprom's reluctance to negotiate could put the project of VNKhH in jeopardy: "Due to the lack of necessary decisions, there is a risk of failure of the planned terms of the project implementation, deterioration of its economic performance." "We can not get a final decision in spite of all the instructions that were given to the main gas producer (Gazprom .-" b ")," complained Mr. Sechin. VNKhK, according to him, has "not very big" gas requirements - only 2.3 billion cubic meters, "but" Gazprom "suggests finding gas resources from the perimeter of Rosneft," which does not have such volumes. The head of the oil company also expressed his hope for "confirmation in full of financing of the external infrastructure of the VNKhK" at the expense of the budget.

Now the project of VNHK includes two stages with a capacity of 12.5 million tons per year for oil and a petrochemical part with a capacity of 3.4 million tons for raw materials, and preparations are under way for construction. Rosneft notes that "further increase in capacity will depend on market conditions." Investments in two stages may amount to about 794 billion rubles., Explained on Thursday the head of the Ministry of Energy Alexander Novak. Initially, it was expected that in 2020, the production of petroleum products (1.6 million tons of gasoline, 800,000 tons of jet fuel, 6 million tons of diesel fuel, 2.2 million tons of naphtha, 600,000 tons of petroleum coke and 400,000 tons of liquefied hydrocarbon gases ), And in 2022 - petrochemical (900 thousand tons of polyethylene, 700 thousand tons of polypropylene and 700 thousand tons of monoethylene glycol).

The problem of gas supplies to VNKhK has not been solved for several years. Gazprom has already begun the expansion of the Sakhalin-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok gas pipeline, but there is no contract with the monopoly on gas supplies to VNKhK from Rosneft. Sakhalin gas has long been the subject of a battle between two companies participating on the island in two production sharing agreements with foreign partners (Sakhalin-1 and Sakhalin-2). Gazprom needs local gas in the future to build the third stage of the LNG plant at Sakhalin-2, and the monopoly is not ready to give part of the raw materials. In turn, Rosneft without gas can not yet build its own LNG project in the Far East.