Yamal LNG significantly exceeds planned costs

Yamal LNG has spent much more than was planned, the Accounting Chamber has revealed. The Department examined how the company used 75 billion rubles, allocated to it from the National Welfare Fund. According to the business plan, Yamal LNG intended to spend 2% of the capital costs for the services of the customer-builder, but spent 10%. Yamal LNG has already spent 446.7 billion rubles on the project, the Accounting Chamber says, but the Department’s representative doesn’t say how much of that was capital expenditure. The total investment in the project through until the end of 2018 is 1.27 trillion rubles, including capital costs - 80% or 1.02 trillion rubles, the Accounting Chamber writes. On the basis of the share of the capital expenditure in the total cost of the project, to date Yamal LNG could spend about 35 billion rubles. A representative of Novatek says that the operating costs of customer-builder correspond to the business plan of the investment project, which was presented by Yamal LNG as justification for the allocation of money from the Fund. "By the end of the project, the share of the project costs will amount to just 2%, as planned," - he assured. At the same time, money of the National Welfare Fund can’t be spend on the operating costs of the customer-builder service and are not spent, the representative says. The Fund’s money was spent "exclusively for the purposes, provided by the passport of the project," - the Accounting Chamber confirmed.