Gazprom Updates Market on Infrastructure
All of Gazprom’s major development projects are progressing on time, despite the weak rouble and western sanctions. According to the board of directors, in a statement March 2,“these pipeline projects will make gas supplies to domestic and foreign consumers more reliable and create conditions for the further strengthening of Gazprom’s position in the global energy market.”
In eastern Russia, Gazprom is building the Power of Siberia gas trunkline, which will deliver gas from Yakutia and Irkutsk to Russia’s Far East and China. The company has built 500 km of line between the Chayandinskoe field and the border with China.
The construction of Russia’s largest gas processing plant – the Amur GPP – is in full swing. The plant will recover valuable components for the petrochemical industry from natural gas delivered from Yakutia and Irkutsk. At present, the company carries out preparations at the site for the process facilities of the GPP’s first start-up complex and building a river berth and the railway infrastructure.
Gazprom is also expanding its resource base in Yamal reshaping “the geography of gas flows for both domestic supplies to European Russia and exports.”
There are two gas production facilities operating at the peninsula’s biggest field, Bovanenko (pictured, below), which has reached a new peak output of 264mn m³/day (the annual equivalent of 96.4 m³/yr). It is planned to bring in operation one more booster compressor station in 2017. With a third gas production facility now under construction, the field will reach its design production level of 115bn m³/yr.
Gas production facilities at the giant Bovanenko field on the Yamal peninsular in western Siberia (Credit: Gazprom)
To the south, Gazprom has received a number of permits for the TurkStream project from the Turkish authorities. Contracts to build two strings of the offshore section have been signed with Allseas. Construction is scheduled to start in the second half of 2017.
Gazprom's priority objective is to ensure reliable gas supplies to Russian consumers during demand peaks in winter. The Company therefore is therefore also boosting deliverability of underground gas storage (UGS) facilities in Russia, including its Baltic enclave, Kaliningrad, where it is also building an LNG regasification terminal scheduled for commissioning this year.
Lukoil gas up, but oil lower in 2016
In other news, Lukoil said March 2 that its 4Q2016 marketable gas production reached 5.1bn m³, up 8.3% compared to 3Q2016. Gas production for full year 2016 was marginally higher year-on-year at 20.3bn m³. Production benefited from the development of new projects in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, it said. Full year 2016 net oil was down by 8.6%, due to a divestment in Kazakhstan and lower entitlements from West Qurna-2 in Iraq, despite the launch in 2H 2016 of its Filanovsky and Pyakyakhinskoe fields in Russia.
William Powell