Russia’s largest natural gas power plant is struggling to connect millions to the network

Standing at the top of the Siberian city of Chita, 46-year-old Vitaliy Gobrik, an electrician, surveyed areas of the fastest-growing town, where the region’s low humidity is high.

“In poverty, people burn charcoal, firewood. . . but they also burn rubber, rubbish, oil spills, wooden railroad tracks, ”said Gobrik, with smoke rising from below. “They put everything they can find in those stoves.”

Chita is one of the largest cities in Siberia that is not connected to the Russian oil network. Instead, the hot springs heat up the center of the city, while residents around the city avoid the freezing temperatures of the furnace, resulting in significant air pollution in Russia.

Although Russia is the world’s largest exporter of natural gas, it is increasingly volatile the highest power in the world, in the countryside it has been difficult to connect its main site with the home internet. Regular sections are omitted.

Only 11 of the 85 regions of Russia are fully connected to the gas pipeline network; about a third of the villages do not agree. In Siberia’s largest federal district, with a population of 17m, only 17 percent of the population has access to piped air.

Gazprom’s largest gas company, which has been expanding domestic services since the 2000s, is planning to build all the “technically viable” domestic pipelines by 2030.

Igor Yushkov, an expert at the National Energy Security Fund think-tank, said it would be better to use the term “financial sanction”. Many areas are remote and have few people left to do expensive work, which may not be economically sound. “In most cases, Gazprom is right in making this dispute,” Yushkov said.

But most of the remaining areas that need to be connected, he added.

“Gas is not a valuable commodity, it is part of justice,” Yushkov said. “We are the largest gas station in the world. . . while most people do not have gas even sitting on the edge of large pipelines. Really, people hate it. ”

Chita, which is about 5,000km or more than four days by train from Moscow, on the China-Mongolia border, is not available in the near future in Gazprom, according to plans to expand the company’s pipelines until 2025.

Konstantin Ilkovsky, the district governor until 2016, realized that gas was very important when he moved to Chita and wondered why his clothes would be gray by the end of the working day. “Everyone received a breather, while we were left as lost,” he said. “I was devastated.”

Ilkovsky asked Moscow to build a gas pipeline and worked on developing a liquefied natural gas reservoir that could be shipped by tanks.

“When there is no wind and the temperature is below freezing – which means the electricity is burning coal in a very high explosion – the city has coal dust,” he said. “And that’s what people breathe.”

But in meetings with Gazprom and other jurisdictions, Ilkovsky was told that the population in his area – more than a million people – was too low to make the pipeline financially viable.

Ilkovsky argues. “There is no alternative to gas. We are the strongest gas. It would be ridiculous even to argue if we need to connect these regions with the network, “the former governor said.

The action is in the basin, at the junction of the two rivers, and the surrounding mountains are in a polluted atmosphere. In the summer, smoke from nearby forests also hits the city, said retired Chita Elvira Cheremnykh.

Cheremnykh, 69, lives in a one-room log house with a wood-burning stove if possible. With coal, “you can be as black as the devil,” he said, standing on the snow outside his house on the day of the poison, the smell of air and the taste of a mixture of sulfur, gasoline and soot.

Her neighbors, however, burn whatever they can find, she said, and their toilet comes out of her window. “It is impossible to breathe. . . it all ends here, ”he said. “You need a gas mask, and even that won’t save you.”

In the 1990s, businesses affiliated with the Yukos oil company developed a plan to build a pipeline near the Trans-Siberian railway, bringing gas to local cities, said Ravil Geniatulin, a former Chita ambassador and a large Zabaikalsky Krai region. for 17 years.

“The work was about to begin,” Geniatulin recalled, in a museum in Chita City. “Maybe the inscriptions are still somewhere – maps, beautiful, where you can see the blue-painted pipes.”

In the middle of the 21st century plans fell, he said, along with Yukos himself – who was overthrown by the government. Their leader Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested.

Announcement of construction of Gazprom’s Power of Siberian pipeline, bringing gas to China from a farm about 300 miles[500 km]from Chita, revived hope in the city. But another method of making the pipe was chosen.

Plans are underway for a second pipeline of Power of Siberia to China via Mongolia. “Also, they will not jump on us again,” said Vladimir Kurbatov, a Chita security guard and a member of the Communist Party, who has coaxed the local government into gas and air pollution.

Kurbatov said many abandoned the idea of ​​gas pipelines, including, but still sought fresh air. He wants government officials to build a warehouse and warehouse for Chita to use on LNG, but he is skeptical that the city’s clean air program will meet its targets.

“I’ve seen how people in western Russia live,” Kurbatov said. “That is clean, using gas. . . While here we rest Mendeleev whole [periodic] table of contents. ”