New Turbine Stands Idle at Power Plant.

(From The Moscow Times)

Gazprom is refusing to provide natural gas to a $375 million turbine unveiled this week at the NorthWest Thermal Power Plant, the plant's chief said Thursday.

That means the 450-megawatt machine is standing idle, even though it was built to help heat apartments in the surrounding Leningrad region this winter.

Furthermore, all new gas-fired turbines that the plant's owner, Unified Energy Systems, or UES, intends to built over the next decade to keep up with soaring demand will face the same dilemma, plant general director Georgio Cimini said.

The problem is that Gazprom is expanding gas exports more than twice as fast as it expands domestic supplies. Export markets pay up to five times more for the fuel. To make it worthwhile for Gazprom to supply more gas at home, senior energy officials called on President Vladimir Putin last week to double the gas tariff. But fears of inflation and voter unrest won out Thursday as the Cabinet approved a plan to raise domestic gas prices gradually.

So for the next few years, new UES turbines may well be gathering dust.

In 1998, the government ordered UES to build the NorthWest station with four turbines and a total installed capacity of 1,800 megawatts by 2008. As part of the same order, Gazprom was told to provide gas for the station's turbines, said a UES spokeswoman, who spoke on condition of anonymity.