Gazprom to build major gas plant and the world's largest helium facility in the

Gazprom Pererabotka Blagoveshchensk, a member of Gazprom (Moscow), and the SIBUR subsidiary Nipigaz have agreed to form a partnership to design and manage the construction of a major gas processing plant (GPP) in the Far East of the Russian Federation, the companies announced on Tuesday. The plant will be built near the town of Svobodny in the Amur region near the Chinese border. It will be Russia's largest GPP facility, with a capacity of 49 billion cubic meters/year and will include the world's largest helium plant.

Nipigaz is Russia's leading center for the design, engineering and management of construction of oil refining and petrochemical plants. The company, acting as contractor on the project, will provide documentation, supply the equipment and materials, carry out construction and installation of the Amur GPP, which will be transferred to Gazprom Pererabotka Blagoveshchensk when mechanically complete.

Natural gas feedstock for the plant will be delivered from the Irkutsk and Yakutia production centers being built by Gazprom within the Eastern Gas Program via the Power of Siberia pipeline. The GPP will produce ready-for-sale methane, ethane, propane, butane, pentane-hexane fraction and helium. The partners plan to start predevelopment work on the site this year, with commissioning in phases synchronized with the development of gas production in Yakutia and the Irkutsk Region.

Russia is planning major investments in the Amur region, including the development of a large gas-chemical cluster, according to Alexandr Galushka, head of Minvostokrazvitye, the Ministry for Far East Development. The Svobodny GPP would provide feedstock for an ethane-based petrochemical complex that SIBUR hopes to build in the region not earlier than 2022-23.