Key Problems in the Development of the Power of Siberia Project

Abstract

The article discusses the implementation of the Power of Siberia project in terms of the opportunities for integrated subsoil development, including the creation of gas, petrochemical, oil-and-gas transportation, and helium industries in regions of the Russia’s East. Within the framework of the project, the following tasks have been accomplished: an analysis of the natural gas resource base of Eastern Siberia and the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) and its extraction; the directions of transport infrastructure development are validated; the key problems, with which the project is associated, are shown; the possibility of implementing a public-private partnership is considered. It is shown that the implementation of the Power of Siberia project faces a number of serious difficulties. So, in particular, neither in Russia nor in the world are there superextensive gas pipelines, by which multicomponent gas would be transported. The intentional reduction in the helium concentration will lead to a sharp rise in the cost of its isolation, which calls into question the entire helium program. In addition, the current concept of developing the gas potential of Eastern Siberia does not envisage the use of the Irkutsk processing cluster, which already has a significant infrastructure for the hydrocarbon raw materials processing, as well as are personnel and production potential, unlike the projected gas processing plant in Amur oblast.