Gazprom has competitors in China: The Development Corporation and Xinao to deal with gas motor fuel

As the Kommersant has got to know, a joint venture of five regions of the Urals Federal District Development Corporation wants to create a joint venture with Chinese Xinao for implementation of the Ural LNG project to the amount of 60 billion rubles on creation of infrastructure for sale of compressed and liquefied natural gas as a vehicle fuel. Now Gazprom is engaged in the development of this trend in the Russian Federation, supported by the Government, which allocates funds to regions for the purchase of buses and equipment on gas fuel. Development Corporation tried to negotiate on collaboration with the monopoly, but for a while these talks haven’t been successful.

The Kommersant managed to read the letter of Vladimir Maslov, general director of Development Corporation (shareholders are the Tyumen, Chelyabinsk and Sverdlovsk region, Yamal-Nenets and Khanty-Mansi autonomous districts), to the Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich. The document states that the corporation intends to establish a joint venture with the Chinese company Xinao (a structure of the ENN group), a cooperation agreement could be signed during the visit of President Xi Jinping to the Russian Federation in May. The parties want to implement the Ural CNG project to create infrastructure for the use of compressed (CNG) and liquefied natural gas (LNG); the project cost is 60 billion rubles, a memorandum of understanding was signed in March, writes Mr. Maslov.