Russia and China plan to jointly develop a giant natural gas field in eastern Siberia and build a pipeline to ship the gas to northeastern China.
Press reports quoting Russia's Interfax news agency said the $6 billion project will involve construction of an 1,870-mile pipeline from Chayandin gas field about 100 miles west of Lensk to Xinyang, about 550 miles south-southwest of Beijing in northern China.
Russia's Sakhaneftegaz and China National Oil & Gas Development Corp. signed a preliminary agreement to develop Chayandin and build a pipeline with a capacity of 12-20 bcm/year. The field is estimated to hold 1.24 tcm (43 tcf) of gas. The report gave no indication of project timing.
OGJ reported a decade ago that Chayandin field was still under appraisal. Yakut officials said the field then contained seven Precambrian and Lower Cambrian horizons with structural and stratigraphic traps and that its sedimentary section was 2,000 m thick (see map, OGJ, Nov. 12, 1990, p. 40).
Another OGJ article said stratigraphic trapping plays a significant role in the southern and central parts of the Nepa-Botuobian region. In particular, it said, Chayandin, Ozernoe, and Nijnekhamakin fields are controlled by a single large stratigraphic trap covering an area of 3,300 sq km.
The article said fields in the region display abnormally low formation pressures and temperatures, around 8-100°C., pressures being close to hydrostatic. Gas fields display oil margins, and gases have commercial concentrations of helium, ethane, propane, and butane; hence it is necessary to use complex and nontraditional approaches when considering commercial development of fields in this region (OGJ, Aug. 15, 1994, p. 98).
