The deputy chairman of Russia's biggest natural gas producer said his village in central Russia had no gas, and that a major gas pipeline in the vicinity meant it had no mushrooms either.
According to the Interfax news agency, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Gazprom Valery Golubev said at an industry forum that his wooden house near Torzhok in the Tver region was right on the Yamal-Europe gas mainline and next to the Moscow-St. Petersburg highway, but the village still had no gas and people had to use canisters.
Access to gas was not his only complaint. “The pipeline cut off the cows' migration route!” Golubev said. “The cows can no longer go to the forest to eat grass. They used to walk round the woods trampling the shrubs. Now they don't go to the woods and don't eat the grass, the forest is thickening and white mushrooms have stopped growing.”
Russia has some of the world's largest gas reserves and is a major exporter, with Gazprom reporting revenues of $145 billion last year. But many poorer and remoter regions remain without hookups to the country's sprawling pipeline network.
