India will pump in US$1.5 billion on the Sakhalin-3 gas field project, according to the paper, which did not cite its sources. The balance will be invested in the joint Russian-Kazakh Kurmangazy oil field in the Caspian Sea, which has the potential of delivering 1 billion metric tons of oil.

“In the first half century of Indian independence, Russia guaranteed our territorial integrity, and in the second half, it may be able to guarantee our energy security,” said India’s petroleum minister Mani Shankar Aiyar.

Meanwhile, Russian presidential envoy Far-East federal district, Konstantin Pulikovsky, said he was confident South Korea would receive LNG from Sakhalin by 2008.

“The main direction of Russian-Korean collaboration is cooperation in the fuel and energy sector [and] Russia is ready to implement large gas projects together with South Korea and to supply oil and gas from Siberian and Far Eastern fields to the republic,” Pulikovsky said in a statement.

“Modernisation of the Khabarovsk oil refinery and the beginning of exploration of oil fields on the Kamchatka shelf and in Sakhalin is of great importance for developing investment cooperation between Russia's Far East and South Korea.”