Russia and Kazakhstan discussed mutual support scenarios.
In the nearest decades, the part of gas in the global energy resource system will grow, so Russia and Kazakhstan are going to join their export forces. European politicians are taking efforts to speed up energy transformation, causing a crisis for consumers. Aware of these attempts, Russia isn’t just idly waiting for the future but takes active action to meet it well-grounded, said Pavel Zavalny, Chairman of the State Duma’s Committee for Energy of the Russian Federation and President of the Russian Gas Society, at the 10th St. Petersburg International Gas Forum.
“Energy transformation is already in progress, but importers are trying to speed it up by political means. This results in dozens of thousands of people staying disconnected from power. Politicians are rushing things. We are entering the era of new normal – or of turbulence. Russia is aware of these challenges, and our objective is to become the leaders of this transformation,” Mr. Zavalny said. He also reminded the audience that according to current agreements, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Belarus and Armenia are looking forward to having a common gas market by 2025.
Murat Zhurebekov, Vice Minister of Energy (Kazakhstan) added that today the countries have strong collaborative relations, and gas from Kazakhstan is transported to Europe via Gazprom’s pipelines.
Mikhail Kuznetsov, Head of Technology Partnership and Equipment & Technology Import Substitution, Gazprom Neft, shared that KazMunayGas has already joined the list of the Institute for initiatives in oil and gas technologies founders. This facility is developing common industry standards, testing new technologies and products, and compiling a data base of reliable suppliers. By 2025, 5+ thousand experts are expected to issue 500+ standards, perform compliance evaluation of 100% of products and develop a data base embracing 3 thousand trusted equipment pieces and technologies.
Valeriy Bessel, Professor at Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas, Executive Vice President at New Tech Services announced that in the past 40 years energy consumption on Earth doubled and keeps increasing by 2.8% every year. According to him, natural gas is going to prevail in the next century and play the key role in the energy transformation – at least because our today’s reserves of carbon feedstock can cover the planet’s demand for 52 years.
Gazprombank is ready to help with accurate supervision over the gas infrastructure development as well as any other projects ordered by the state. Oleg Melnikov, Executive Vice President of Gazprombank told the audience that for the last 10 years the bank had been successfully managing state contracts and had even developed a unique management system for that without any equivalents throughout the globe. The bank management experiment was started by Vladimir Putin, current Russian President, in the year of 2009 – at that time, he held the post of the Russian Prime Minister. 4 years later, the experiment was considered successful and implemented permanently.
Dmitriy Teplinsky, First Deputy CEO at OMZ PJSC, stated that his company has every technology necessary to complete the hydrogen economy chain. They are just waiting for this fuel to become Number One.
Thomas Pellette, President of Solar Turbines and Senior Vice President at Caterpillar Inc., spoke about abandoning carbon, too. He explained that gas as the most sustainable fuel would have the uttermost part in the energy transformation because energy demand would be growing. Caterpillar Inc. is already following this trend, gradually reducing emissions from their production procedures and equipment operated.
Thomas Pellette added that their company had a wide network in Russia, employing 5+ thousand people, and they also had about 1 thousand workers in Kazakhstan, which could promote collaboration between the two countries.