While Moscow focuses on lucrative gas exports, cities like Chita in Siberia only crave a breath of fresher air.

The dilemma of the gas superpower

Looking down from above the Siberian city of Chita, 46-year-old energy worker Vitaliy Gobrik has observed the city’s rapidly expanding suburbs. The landscape below was jagged with thousands of tall and low chimneys covered in a cloud of gray smoke.

Gobrik said as the smoke sank to the horizon: “Out of poverty, people burned coal, firewood… But they also burned rubber, garbage, waste oil, wooden railway sleepers. They threw in the oven anything they wanted. find”.

Chita is one of many large cities that are not yet connected to Russia’s domestic gas network. Instead, coal-fired power plants are heating the city center, and suburban residents combat the freezing temperatures by burning fireplaces. This reluctant act causes the worst air pollution in Russia.

Russia is the world’s largest gas exporter and is projecting its strength as an energy superpower on the international stage. But at home, the country is struggling to connect a vast swath of land to a domestic gas network. The entire large area seems to have been left behind.

Only 11 of Russia’s 85 administrative regions are fully connected to the gas pipeline network, leaving a third of the settlements unconnected. In the vast Siberian federal region with 17 million inhabitants, only 17% of the region has access to gas.

Russia’s energy giant Gazprom, which has been responsible for expanding infrastructure in the country since the 2000s, said it plans to build “technically viable” pipelines by 2020. 2030.

Igor Yushkov, an analyst with the National Energy Security Fund, said it would be more appropriate to use the term “economically reasonable”. Many areas are too remote and sparsely populated to make costly projects impossible.

“In any case, Gazprom is right in making this argument,” Yushkov said. But, he added, many areas should still be connected. He argues that gas is not only a commodity but also an element of social justice.

“We are the country with the largest gas reserves in the world. Meanwhile, many people do not have gas even while living along major export pipelines. Honestly, people are very upset. “, he said.

Vulnerabilities in Russia’s gas network.

Dream is just a dream?

Chita, a city 5,000 km from Moscow, bordering China and Mongolia, is not at all part of Gazprom’s short-term proposal, according to the company’s plan to expand the pipeline until 2025.

Konstantin Ilkovsky, governor of the region until 2016, realized that gas was a priority when he first moved to Chita. He wondered why his clothes were dark gray at the end of the day. “Everybody has gas, while we’re lagging behind like outcasts. Personally, I feel very disgruntled,” he said.

Ilkovsky has lobbied Moscow for a gas pipeline and expansion of storage facilities for liquefied natural gas (LNG), a fuel that can be transported by tanker.

Coal-fired power plants heat the city center, while suburban residents combat the freezing temperatures by burning fireplaces with everything, causing Russia’s worst air pollution.

But during a meeting with Gazprom and the authorities, Ilkovsky was informed that his city has a population of just over 1 million. This number is too low to meet the criteria of building an economically viable gas pipeline.

Chita is located in the basins of two rivers, where the surrounding mountains are also filled with polluted air. In the summer, smoke from nearby wildfires accumulates in the city, said Elvira Cheremnykh, a retiree living in Chita.

“Even a gas mask won’t save you,” says Cheremnykh. Her neighbors burned whatever they found to keep warm. The air reeked of sulfur, gasoline, and soot.

Ravil Geniatulin, governor of Chita and the vast Zabaikalsky Krai region for 17 years, said that in the 1990s, businesses affiliated with the Yukos oil company developed plans to build a pipeline next to a section of the line. Trans-Siberian Railway. The plan was to bring gas to cities in the region but fell apart in the mid-2000s.

The announcement of the construction of Gazprom’s massive Power of Siberia pipeline, bringing gas to China for export from a field located just 500 kilometers from Chita, once again ignited hope for the city. But another path was chosen instead.

Chita, a city of 1.1 million residents, is not connected to Gazprom’s domestic gas pipeline network.

Vladimir Kurbatov, a security guard in Chita, said many people have given up on the idea of ​​a gas pipeline, but they still crave clean air. He wants the authorities to build the treatment plants and storage infrastructure necessary for Chita to use LNG. But people remain skeptical about the viability of government-led clean air programs.

Kurbatov wishes: “I’ve seen how people in western Russia live. It’s all clean there and they all use gas. While here we breathe all the elements. in the periodic table”.

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