• 2011 March 29

    To help and gain

    The devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan that have caused the destruction of the country’s infrastructure and damaged the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant will certainly have an impact on world energy markets. The question is will Russia be able to increase exports of coal, crud oil, petroleum products and gas, and will the Far East bunker companies boost sales volume?

    At the current moment Japan's future energy balance is not yet predictable , however, it is now clear that to restore it the country will require a significant volume of energy.

    As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said at a meeting on the integrated development of the fuel and energy complex of Eastern Siberia and the Far East, to stabilize energy supplies to Japan Russia is ready to find a way to increase deliveries of natural gas to this country. Gazprom is capable of increasing the pipeline natural gas supply to Europe by 60m cbm, which is an equivalent of nearly 40,000 tons of LNG a day. “So, this volume of LNG can be exported to Japan ", Vladimir Putin said adding that the Europe-bound LNG carriers will turn around and be directed to Japan.

    "Such a large-scale swap transaction between Russia and the EU could be a real emergency energy relief program for Japan, to ensure supply of 1 million tons of LNG within a month. And during 100 days we could replace the volume with additional 6bn cbm of pipeline gas for Europe. Accordingly, Japan will receive additional 4 million tons of LNG. I repeat, we can start doing it right now. We are ready for it", Vladimir Putin said.