Russian natural gas monopoly OAO Gazprom sent its first shipment to Japan of liquefied natural gas on Friday, the company's latest step to acquire experience with the fuel before its own LNG projects come on line, AP REPORTED. Gazprom said in a statement that it had acquired the 145,000 cubic meters (188,500 cubic yards) of LNG (the equivalent of 92 million cubic meters/119.6 million cubic yards of gas) from Japan's Mitsubishi Corp. and that the gas was delivered Friday to Chubu Electric Power Co. Inc.'s Chita receiving terminal in Japan. Gazprom spokesmen were not able to say immediately wherethe gas had originally come from, though Mitsubishi is involved in LNG projects in Australia, Brunei, Oman and Russia. «This successful trading operation between Gazprom and Mitsubishi Corp. is Gazprom's first step into the liquefied gas market of the Asia-Pacific region,» the statement said. It did not disclose the mechanism by which it acquired the gas, but Gazprom has swapped its own piped gas supplies for the liquefied gas of other international energy companies previously. The shipment to Japan is Gazprom's third worldwide: the two previous went to the United States and Britain. Gazprom's future LNG shipments to the U.S. will come from its 3.2 trillion cubic meter (4.16 trillion cubic yard) Shtokman offshore gas field in the Barents sea, where it has yet to announce the two or three foreign energy companies that will help it develop the project. The company is also negotiating with Royal Dutch Shell PLC to acquire a stake in its giant Sakhalin-2 project off Russia's Pacific coast, which will supply LNG to Asian and Pacific markets. Gazprom is the world's biggest natural gas producer and supplies a quarter of Europe's gas.
