By Inti Landauro
PARIS--Power utility Engie (GSZ.FR), formerly known as GDF Suez,
Tuesday said it has signed a contract to buy one million tons of
liquefied natural gas a year from Yamal LNG, a Russian gas field
operated through a joint venture between Total SA (TOT) and
Russia's Novatek (NVTK.MZ).
Through the contract, Engie is committed to buy the annual
amount of gas for 23 years starting in 2018, the company said.
The $27-billion project to extract gas from the Yamal peninsula
in the Arctic Ocean, involves processing it for export and shipping
it on special ice-breakers.
The project will have a capacity of 16.5 million metric tons of
LNG a year, most of which will be shipped to China to supply
companies that have been aggressively seeking increased imports of
LNG and piped natural gas to meet growing demand.
Engie plans to ship the gas to a terminal it operates in
Montoir-de-Bretagne on the French Atlantic coast. The French
utility will then deliver the gas worldwide.
Write to Inti Landauro at inti.landauro@wsj.com
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