LNG

Gazprom shareholders have just held their annual general meeting and despite Western sanctions wiping out profits in the past year and leading to a net loss, one of the world’s largest gas companies has started rebuilding new markets to replace the European Union.

Russian natural gas giant Gazprom, seeking an outlet for supplies previously delivered to Europe before the Ukraine invasion, has signed an accord with Iran to supply the  Gulf nation with pipeline gas from Russia.

Rosneft, the Russian oil and gas company and the largest refiner and former partner of international majors such as ExxonMobil and BP, reported a fall in profits but is still managing the Western sanctions storm better than pipeline natural gas company Gazprom and LNG project developer Novatek.

Rosneft said that in the nine months to the end of September 2023 revenues declined to 6,612 trillion roubles ($74.4 billion), down from last year 7,202 trillion roubles ($81.05Bln) during the same nine months.

Operating income dropped to 1,778 trillion roubles ($20.10 billion) from 2,014 trillion ($22.65Bln) in the same nine months of 2022.

BP had previously held a 20 percent shareholding in Rosneft but pulled out immediately following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Sakhalin projects

ExxonMobil also ended its decades-long involvement in Russia, exiting major oil and gas joint ventures with Rosneft off Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East.

Rosneft said its production of liquid hydrocarbons increased by 3.9 percent in the first nine months of 2023 to 4 million barrels per day, mainly due to resumption of production at the Sakhalin-1 oil project.

Total production of all hydrocarbons rose by 10.7 percent in the nine months to 5.5M barrels per day of oil equivalent, whereas output of hydrocarbons in the third quarter had amounted to 5.4 million barrels per day of oil equivalent.

Production of liquid hydrocarbons in the third quarter equalled 3.9M barrels per day amid Russian oil production restrictions since March 2023 to offset the effects of sanctions.

Rosneft’s natural gas production increased by 33 percent in the nine months year-on-year to 1.5M barrels of oil equivalent per day.

Natural gas and associated gas are produced by 35 subsidiaries and joint ventures of Rosneft in Western and Eastern Siberia, Central Russia, Southern European Russia and the Far East.

Refining

Over the years, Rosneft has been consistently implementing a programme to modernise its refineries, which has enabled it to expand its product range and improve the quality of its products such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

The company's refining unit operates 13 major refineries in the Russian Federation and total design capacity of the company's refineries in Russia is 118.4 million tons of oil per year.

Rosneft, which has a 40 percent share of the Russian refining market, said its oil refining throughput increased by 3.3 percent in the reporting period year-on-year to 65.8M tons, and rose 0.9 percent quarter-on-quarter to 21.7M tons.

Gazprom, the Russian natural gas supplier hit by Western sanctions over the Ukraine invasion, saw its shares drop on the Moscow stock exchange after the board said the company would not be paying a dividend to shareholders as it reported a profits plunge.

Gazprom plans to order Russian-manufactured LNG-powered trucks to transport liquid helium from the Amur Gas Processing Plant, the largest such plant in Russia and second-biggest in the world.

Prior to being fed into “Power of Siberia” natural gas pipeline to China gas undergoes treatment at Amur, producing valuable petrochemicals and gases. 

The construction site of the Amur GPP is located near the town of Svobodny in the Amur Region of the Russian Far East.

Alexey Miller, Chairman of Gazprom, and Sergey Chemezov, Director General of the state-owned Rostec Corp. signed an agreement for the first batch of LNG-powered trucks to be produced.

The vehicles will be made by the Kamaz Group, a subsidiary of Rostec.

“The first 18 LNG-powered trucks that will transport helium will have special thermally-insulated containers and are expected to be delivered in 2021,” said Gazprom.

The Amur Gas GPP has a design capacity of 42 billion cubic metres of gas per year and when fully completed will include the world's largest helium production facilities.

The completed plant will comprise six production lines, with the first two lines slated for commissioning in 2021. 

The remaining lines will be consecutively put into operation before the end of 2024. The Amur plant is expected to reach its design capacity by 2025.

In addition to sales of gas and helium, the plant will produce ethane, propane, butane and pentane-hexane fraction.

Gazprom and Chinese major, China National Petroleum Corp., have signed a 30-year Sales and Purchase Agreement for Russian gas to be supplied via the northern pipeline route, which was partially started up in December 2019 to send limited volumes.

June 10 (LNG) - Gazprom Chairman Alexey Miller and his counterpart at China National Petroleum. Corp, Wang Yilin, have held talks in St. Petersburg on the ongoing preparations for the start of Russian pipeline gas supplies to China via the eastern “Power of Siberia” project due to start up on December 1.

   “The construction of the border-adjacent Atamanskaya compressor station, which will maintain the required pressure during gas deliveries to China, is nearing completion,” said Miller. Gazprom said that they also discussed cooperation between the companies in the areas of gas-fired power generation, underground gas storage and use of natural gas as a vehicle fuel.

Mitsui, the Japanese trading house and liquefied natural gas market participant, has held talks with Gazprom on progress made in two Russian plans to expand LNG output, on the existing Sakhalin Island plant in the Far East and at a planned facility west of Saint Petersburg.

TurkStream, the natural gas export pipeline from Russia to Turkey, has completed its first offshore phase across the Black Sea, while the second onshore phase will deliver gas to the Turkish market and southern and southeastern Europe in competition to LNG.

PetroVietnam executives have held talks with Russian natural gas company Gazprom to discuss limited Vietnamese offshore gas production and the progress of liquefied natural gas projects in the Southeast Asian nation that is still without LNG imports or infrastructure.