Major overhaul begins at Sakhalin LNG plant

The Sakhalin Energy consortium led by Russia's Gazprom has closed its gas production and LNG facilities in the Russian Far East so that scheduled repairs and modernisation work can take place, it said on July 12.

Sakhalin Energy operates three oil and gas platforms off the coast of Sakhalin Island as well as a 9.6mn metric ton/year liquefaction terminal that primarily serves the Japanese gas market. It also runs facilities to export oil via tanker. The consortium, whose other members are Shell and Japanese firms Mitsui and Mitsubishi, said the overhaul would continue into August and had been factored into its LNG shipping plan for the year.

The work will take place at the Lunskaya-A platform and at port infrastructure, where two of the four loading arms used for loading LNG into carriers will be replaced. A compressor unit at one of the LNG's two liquefaction trains will also undergo repairs.

The downtime follows maintenance work at Sakhalin Energy's Piltun-Astokhskaya B platform that ran between June 1 and 21. Repairs also took place at the LNG plant in March. But the latest overhaul will ensure that the project can operate without disruptions in 2022, Sakhalin Energy said.

Gazprom also took the TurkStream pipeline offline for maintenance in June, and both the Nord Stream and Yamal-Europe will be closed this month for work. Novatek's Yamal LNG terminal will also close between August 1 and 19 for maintenance. These disruptions come at a time when gas prices are unusually high as a result of a summer heat wave, constraints to LNG supply and increased gas volumes being placed in storage ahead of winter.