Economic efficiency of gas industry investment projects in Russia on the example of export gas pipelines

The efficiency of domestic and export supplies of natural gas largely determines the sustainable development of the Russian economy and national security. At present, in the context of sanction restrictions and increasing uncertainty in the global energy market, the theoretical and practical aspects of the economic efficiency of investment projects in the gas industry are of fundamental importance and require further development. The article discusses the theoretical foundations of the category “economic efficiency” and methodological approaches to its assessment on the example of investment projects in the gas industry. A comparative analysis of the standard methodology for determining economic efficiency of capital investments and the methodological recommendations for evaluating the effectiveness of investment projects in the planned and market economics has been performed based on the criteria specified by the authors. A review of published studies on methods for assessing economic efficiency of investment projects in the oil and gas sector has been performed. It is concluded that to assess the efficiency of investments is proposed to use the discounted cash flow method as the main approach, as well as the alternative methods in the papers of Russian authors. Two large-scale projects of the Russian gas industry have been considered, a review of published studies on the efficiency assessment has been performed with emphasis on the external effects due to implementation of the projects under consideration. According to the study results, the uniqueness of the implementation conditions of each gas transportation project, fundamental importance of the influence of non-economic factors on the project implementation and the need to develop assessment methods for the economic efficiency of investment projects were noted with due regard to the uncertainty and risk impact.