/ world today news/ Russian President Putin will make an official visit in December this year. in the Japanese prefecture of Yamaguchi for a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. At the meeting, long-term cooperation projects worth billions of state will be discussed. dollars. One of the projects is for an underwater electric cable from the Russian island of Sakhalin to the Japanese city of Wakanai. Relations between the two countries improved sharply after the meeting of the two leaders in Sochi in May this year. (Russian-Ez.)
As Japanese media write, Russia and Japan are actively discussing a project to lay a cable along the seabed to transmit electricity from Sakhalin to the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. This and a number of other major projects should form part of an agreement package at the December meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Yamaguchi Prefecture.
Japanese officials have expressed interest in the underwater power cable project, hoping it will help resolve the four Kuril Islands issue that will be discussed at a Russia-Japan summit in December, the Nikkei business daily reported on Wednesday. The cable will link the southern tip of Sakhalin, separated by 40 kilometers of water, with Japan’s northernmost city of Wakkanai. Electricity will come from a thermal power plant owned by RusHydro. Although the project is estimated to cost $6 billion, it should be economically viable because Sakhalin electricity costs three times less than in Japan, which is actively seeking cheaper energy sources. The project is also beneficial to Russia, which is also trying to diversify its electricity buyers. So far, most of Russia’s energy exports go to Europe.
Along with the development of the project, work was also carried out to study the possibility of creating a regional energy network, the “Asian Super Grid”, which, in addition to Russia and Japan, will also include China and South Korea. This idea was proposed back in 2011 by the president of the Japanese technology company SoftBank Group, Masayoshi San. Russia became interested in the project in 2013, but Tokyo remained indifferent to it until recently. Firstly, the Japanese were wary of its high cost, and secondly, they were afraid of becoming energy dependent on Russia.
The attitude towards the project in the Land of the Rising Sun changed in May after a meeting between Putin and Abe in Sochi. The Japanese prime minister hinted that progress on the issue of ownership of the Kuril Islands could lead to large-scale economic cooperation between the two countries. In Tokyo, talk of an underwater cable began after Moscow proposed adding the project to the list of topics for discussion for concluding an agreement on economic cooperation. According to the Russian Minister for the Development of the Far East, Alexander Galushka, SoftBank and the Russian energy company Rosseti are already in talks on creating a joint venture to lay the cable. The director of the Russian company, Oleg Bulgarin, met with Sun in Tokyo on September 9 and discussed technical and other issues.
The Russian side has already begun preparatory work. RusHydro, for example, has begun building a power plant on Sakhalin with a capacity sufficient to supply the Japanese market with electricity. Installation of generators began in October. Japan Bank for International Cooperation is actively involved in negotiations on financing the project.
According to Alexey Chekunkov, CEO of the state Far East Development Fund, the large Chinese energy company State Grid Corp. of China and the Korean firm Korea Electric Power are interested in creating the Asian Super Grid.
The project will require changes to laws in Japan because it involves connecting the energy networks of Japan and another country. Tokyo is still worried about energy dependence on Moscow, but a Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman believes the benefits outweigh all concerns: “From a political and symbolic point of view, connecting Russia and Japan via an electric cable is of great importance.”
Analysts familiar with the Japanese government’s work believe the undersea power cable project has good prospects if Japanese and Russian leaders can get stalled peace treaty talks between the countries off the ground in December, Nikkei reports.
Of course, the proposed energy cooperation is not limited to electricity and an undersea cable. A group of Japanese politicians from the ruling coalition is proposing to build a gas pipeline to supply gas to Tokyo Bay via Hokkaido. The proposal was sent to the government on October 18 by members of parliament from the Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, the Komeito Party. The group is led by Liberal Democrat Takeo Kuwamura, a former cabinet secretary and close ally of Abe.
The project involves laying a roughly 1,500-kilometer pipeline and is estimated to cost 700 billion yen ($6.7 billion). A significant portion of the pipeline between the southern tip of Sakhalin and Wakkanai will also run along the seabed.
If the gas project is successful, Japan will be able to obtain cheaper gas compared to liquefied gas delivered by ships, so its profitability in the medium and long term could be significantly higher than that of the electric project.
Since the pipeline construction project will allow Russia to include Japan in the list of its long-term partners, Gazprom decided to speed up the design and research work on its feasibility. Alexander Galushka included it in the list of topics for discussion at the bilateral meeting on economic cooperation. His subordinates already discussed the construction of the gas pipeline with their colleagues from the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry on October 21 in Moscow.
Of course, the “gas” project has its obstacles. For example, environmentalists believe that the gas pipeline, a significant part of which will run along the seabed, could cause serious harm to the environment and marine fauna. The issue of distributing costs between the two countries is also important, as is the question of which fields on Sakhalin will supply gas to Japan.
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