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A consortium of Japanese companies, led by the Marubeni Corporation, intends to build reportedly the largest floating gas power station in the world just off Sakhalin island beginning sometime next year.

Marubeni’s chief representative for Khabarovsk and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Chizi Matsu, said taht in designing the floating, 150-megawatt, gas turbine power station, planners hope to minimize the effects that earthquakes and tremors would otherwise have on a land-based generating plant. The station will be located just off the northern coast of the island.

“With all the ongoing construction projects for the development of the Sakhalin oil and gas fields,” Matsu said, “this station will fulfill much of the energy needs of the area. We’re only at the research stage at this point, though.”

Once in operation, the local energy company, SakhalinEnergo, will take ownership of the station, which will be supplied with gas not from the developing offshore fields, but from Sakhalinmorneftetgaz’s (SMG) on-shore supplies, according to Matsu.

Four Japanese construction and electrical supply companies have already been named as sub-contractors in the $170 million project, the bulk of which will be constructed at a Hokkaido, Japan-based shipyard. By the end of this year, bids will be accepted from Russian sub-contractors for additional, on-site construction, though Matsu was not able to comment on the size of the contracts to be awarded locally.

Matsu said the Export-Import Bank of Japan will be financing project’s overall construction and attendant infrastructure construction.

Shuskaya Botanati, director of the Sakhalin office of the Japanese Consulate in Khabarovsk, commented that the Japanese government is paying more and more attention to ongoing and prospective projects on Sakhalin. He added that attention was not limited to the offshore oil and gas projects, but also included such projects as the Marubeni floating generating station.

Last December, the Japanese Ex-Im Bank awarded a $116 million loan to the Sakhalin Energy consortium of U.S., Japanese, and Dutch oil companies involved in the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project.