“We just trust each other” – Gennady Timcheno speaks about business with new partners and old friends
A year ago, Novatek started a campaign on the liberalization of Russian gas exports and the success will be officially consolidated in the near future. The co-owner of Novatek ,Gennady Timchenko told the Komemrsant how they managed to destroy the many-years monopoly of Gazprom on the most profitable market, why it isn’t interesting to participate in privatization and how useful it is to have a lot of old friends from St. Petersburg.
Q - It seems that the LNG export liberalization will take place only because Novatek and you, as its shareholder, need it. In only a year you managed to coordinate a lot of controversial questions and win against Gazprom that has never happened before…
A.- We have been engaged in the project of Yamal LNG for several years. The main thing for us is to be a step ahead. After all, not Rosneft, nor Gazprom can be competitors of our project - we will launch much earlier. We will be in the market when they still have to enter it. And we really risk to losing to the competition to Australia, Qatar, the USA and others. Novatek is also Russian company, so what's the difference who will supply liquefied natural gas? Now the preparation of regulatory framework is continued, the process goes on. And we,I guess, are moving in the right direction. Russia is interested in the liberalization of the LNG export.
