A natural gas liquefaction complex will be built in the Minsk region. This was announced today, September 19, by Lyubov Brish, CEO of Gazprom Helium Service, at a meeting of several committees of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union of Belarus and Russia.
According to her, the plant is scheduled to be put into operation in 2025. At the same time, she noted that the relevant legislation has not yet been developed in Belarus and it is almost impossible to build a plant for the production of liquefied natural gas (LNG) at the moment, but a solution has been found. The site of the enterprise will be a zone with a special legal regime – the Sino-Belarusian industrial park “Great Stone”, and the plant itself will be built “in connection” with a similar enterprise in the Volgograd region. The estimated capacity of the future complex is 3,360 tons of LNG, and the main consumers of fuel are MAZ and BelAZ vehicles.
In addition, a cooperation agreement was signed with BelAZ and the Kuzbassrazrezugol company (Kemerovo region of the Russian Federation) on the formatting of a group of mining dump trucks with gas engines. Gazprom also plans to use LNG from the Great Stone plant to refuel vehicles on the M1 highway (Brest – Moscow).
“Belarus is also important for us because we can launch into the North-South corridor.” – Brish pointed out.
He also said that the area of the site for the future plant is 3 hectares, including the area for the LNG storage park. According to him, Gazprom Helium Service has several proposals for the Belarusian side. For example, this concerns the signing of a memorandum of cooperation in the field of LNG use, the creation of a single centre of competence and applied research in this area, a pilot project to create an infrastructure for LNG production and marketing. In addition, Gazprom structures are also in favour of switching part of the country’s bus fleet to gas in order to test the technology on MAZ vehicles.
Let us recall that Belarus and Russia are building a Union State. The oil and gas sector is one of the most important areas of bilateral cooperation.
