Supply of gas from Russia's Sakhalin-1 project suspended

(Adds Exxon comments, detail)

MOSCOW, Jan 18 (Reuters) - The supply of gas from Russia's Sakhalin-1 project to a pipeline in the country's Far East (Kuala Lumpur: 5029.KL - news) has been suspended due to a problem at a compressor station, the Russian Energy Ministry said on Thursday.

The ministry said it was looking into the incident and that a power station in the Khabarovsk region was still supplying gas to the surrounding area, where the temperature was minus 17 degrees Celsius (1.4 Fahrenheit).

Sakhalin-1 is operated by Exxon Mobil (Swiss: XOM-USD.SW - news) subsidiary Exxon Neftegaz Ltd, through which it owns 30 percent in the project. Russia's Rosneft and India's ONGC control 20 percent each. Japanese consortium SODECO owns 30 percent.

An Exxon Mobil spokesman in Moscow, Andrey Kurbatov, said no one was injured and no facilities damaged.

"It is expected that gas supplies will be restored soon," he said.

The project delivers limited supplies of natural gas to the Khabarovsk region. Fully fledged gas development has been hampered by the lack of an agreement with Gazprom, which has a monopoly on Russian gas exports by pipeline. (Reporting by Anastasia Lyrchikova and Oksana Kobzeva; Writing by Andrew Osborn and Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Dale Hudson)