MOSCOW, April 4 (Reuters) - RusKhimAlyans, a subsidiary of Russia's state-owned Gazprom GAZP.MM, announced job vacancies for its new gas processing complex in the Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga, in a sign of confidence the plant will start operations despite sanctions.
The complex is part of Gazprom's strategy to shift its focus to processing and will combine a gas processing plant and a gas chemical complex.
It is designed to process annually 45 billion cubic metres of natural gas, 13 million metric tons of liquefied natural gas, 3.6 million tons of ethane and up to 1.8 million tons of liquefied petroleum gas.
That would make it Russia's largest gas processing plant and one of the world's largest in terms of production volumes.
The start of operations has been delayed after Western partners, such as Linde LIN.DE, an industrial gases and engineering company, left the project following the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022.
RusKhimAlyans has been embroiled in legal battles with the companies, claiming billions of dollars in damages.
According to a staff recruitment website, the company has 170 job vacancies, including a LNG contract manager, a logistics expert and a paperwork specialist.
The construction of the complex started in 2021. According to the Russian government documents, the first line of the gas processing complex is expected to start operations in 2026, while the first line of the LNG plant is scheduled to start working in 2027.
Russia has a goal to boost its share of the global LNG market to around a fifth by 2030-2035, but Western sanctions in response to the Ukraine war have complicated the ambition.
The United States imposed measures on some companies involved in development of Ust-Luga Liquified Natural Gas terminal. The U.S. has also included RusKhimAlyans in the "Specially Designated Nationals" list, which blocs the assets and prohibits U.S. citizens from dealing with them.
(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; editing by Barbara Lewis)
((vladimir.soldatkin@thomsonreuters.com; twitter: @vsoldatkin;))
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