Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee; Oleg Belozerov, President of Russian Railways; Dmitry Pumpyansky, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sinara Group; and Andrey Bokarev, President of Transmashholding, signed the Agreement of Cooperation in the NGV sector at the 2016 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. The document is aimed at promoting natural gas use in railway and road transportation, reducing carbon footprint, facilitating NGV market growth, increasing domestic gas consumption, and fostering the national machine building industry.
According to the agreement, Gazprom will build modern natural gas fueling infrastructure facilities in the locations approved by Russian Railways and will provide for the refueling of the railway rolling stock with LNG. The Company will assist Russian Railways in testing natural gas-powered locomotives.
Russian Railways will see to the adaptation of production and technical facilities at railroad depots and will develop and implement a vocational training and re-training system for engineers, technicians, and crews working at gas-powered locomotives. In addition, Russian Railways will adopt a program for converting its corporate vehicles to natural gas.
In their turn, Sinara Group and Transmashholding will provide for the certification, manufacturing, and maintenance of natural gas-powered locomotives (mainline gas turbine locomotives for Sinara Group and gas turbine shunters for Transmashholding). The signatories to the document agreed to synchronize their efforts in expanding the fleet of gas-powered rail transport and developing the refueling and maintenance infrastructure.
Source: Gazprom
