RUSSIAN exports of gas to Japan, South Korea and China will almost certainly be carried by tanker rather than by pipeline for at least another decade.
This will ensure that most of it will go to Japan. Producer TNK-BP admitted this week that it cannot resolve a conflict with state-controlled Gazprom over the terms and direction of gas exports from the Kovykta field in Irkutsk region.
By 2017 that project will have the capacity to supply gas to China and Korea through a projected 5,000km-long pipeline.
TNK-BP wants to ship to the Asian countries, but Gazprom may want to delay the Kovykta project until it can gain better control over its management and cashflow.
For the time being, it wants to ship gas westwards to Europe. In the meantime, Russia's first Far Eastern gas exports will be LNG produced by the Royal Dutch/Shell group at the Sakhalin-2 project, and loaded on LNG carriers from the new plant being built at Prigorodnoye, at the southern tip of Sakhalin island.
The tankers will then transit the La Perouse Strait between Sakhalin and Hokkaido. The plant will have an annual capacity of 9.6M tonnes of LNG a year.
Toho Gas and several other buyers have already signed for 3.1M tonnes a year, starting in 2010.