OAO Gazprom, Russia's largest gas company, is considering investing in Japanese power utilities in a bid to expand fuel sales to the country, its chief financial officer said.
"The commissioning of Russia's first liquefied natural gas plant on Sakhalin Island and sales of the fuel to Japan gives us an opportunity for such investment in utilities, although we have no specific plans yet," Andrei Kruglov said in an interview Friday in Tokyo.
Russia, holder of the world's largest natural gas reserves, last month opened its first LNG plant on Sakhalin Island, allowing the gas export monopoly access to markets in Japan, South Korea and the United States. The new LNG plant, part of the Sakhalin-2 project, is just 160 km from the northern tip of Hokkaido.