Russia's Rosneft is considering the possibility of buying crude on theinternational market to supply a planned refinery and petrochemicals complexin Russia's Far East, CEO Igor Sechin told reporters Friday.
"We don't need to pump all the volumes through the pipeline [from thewest of the country]," Sechin said on the sidelines of the St. PetersburgInternational Economic Forum.
"We can supply crude from the Asia-Pacific region," he said, in responseto a question from Platts.
"Corresponding sea terminals will be planned," he said.
Rosneft is considering building the complex with a maximum throughputcapacity of 24 million mt/year of crude, Sechin said.
Total capacity, including the petrochemical element, could reach up to30 million mt/year, he added.
Sechin said that Rosneft expects there to be demand for petrochemicalproducts in the Asian markets.
"There is the possibility of producing products with high margin, thereis a market there," he said.
But supplies of crude to the complex are likely to experience abottleneck. The capacity of the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline, throughwhich Russia deliveries its new export blend ESPO to international markets,is 600,000 b/d.
There are plans to boost the line's capacity to 1 million b/d, but itwould still not be enough for supplies to a petrochemical complex of suchscale, given Rosneft's plans to boost exports to China drastically.
