Russian President Vladimir Putin told gas monopoly Gazprom on Tuesday it must develop a new gas export policy to respond to the development of the liquefied natural gas and shale gas markets.
“We are not novices on the gas market and know its laws well. That is why, today we must act on this market with the utmost thrift but at the same time very flexibly,” Putin told a meeting of the presidential commission on the development of Russia’s fuel and energy sector.
Gazprom’s oil-linked natural gas pricing formula makes Russia’s natural gas more expensive than gas supplied by other exporters to the European market and threatens to reduce Gazprom’s presence on external markets.
The growing volumes of trade in liquefied natural gas is an important world energy market trend and large energy companies from the United States and Canada have already started to work in this direction, while an increasing number of countries are introducing new technologies for gas production and processing, Putin said.
“In the United States, these technologies help extract shale gas at a profit,” he said, adding that US shale gas output had expanded to 214 billion cubic meters in 2011.
Russia’s energy security doctrine will be approved in November, Putin said.
The doctrine will assist in ensuring reliable supplies of energy resources and the innovative development of the country’s fuel and energy sector. The doctrine’s implementation will raise the energy efficiency of all the sectors of the domestic economy and ensure non-discriminatory access for Russian exporters to external markets, he said.