Sakhalin LNG Plant Goes Offline for Maintenance

One of the two trains of the Sakhalin-2 LNG plant has gone offline for just over a month of maintenance, the project's operator Sakhalin Energy said on June 15.

Sakhalin Energy, a consortium comprising Russia's Gazprom, Anglo-Dutch Shell and Japan's Mitsui and Mitsubishi, had intended to take both trains offline this summer, but decided to delay some of the work until next year because of coronavirus-related disruptions.

Maintenance will take place at the Lunskoye-A offshore platform, the onshore processing facility, a booster station and the LNG plant itself.

"Due to current economic downturn and the pandemic challenge, we had to modify the initial turnaround scope," Sakhalin Energy's production director Ole Myklestad said. "To ensure the safety of our people and reliable production, the company has decided to follow the original timeline, but shut down only one train at the LNG plant."

The Sakhalin-2 LNG plant has a design capacity of 9.6mn mt/yr but output typically exceeds 11mn mt/yr. Production came to 11.15mn mt in 2019, down from 11.41mn mt in 2018. Most of its gas is sold to customers in the Asia-Pacific area.