LNG

A fire apparently caused by a drone attack broke out at a Baltic Sea fuel terminal in Russia owned by the largest Russian liquefied natural gas producer Novatek.

“There were no casualties as a result of the fire at the Novatek terminal in the port of Ust-Luga and the personnel were evacuated,” said a statement from the authorities in the Ust-Luga area near the Gulf of Finland and called the Leningrad region.

The Ust-Luga complex is located about 170 kilometres (105 miles) west of the city of St. Petersburg and processes stable gas condensate.

This is a very light oil obtained by separation from natural gas during production and during distillation the condensate at Uist-Luga produces fuels such as heavy naphtha, jet fuel, fuel oil and gasoil..

Novatek in addition to the Ust-Luga complex also owns the Yamal LNG export plant that still ships cargoes to Western Europe and China from the Yamal Peninsula in Arctic Russia.

Condensate

Novatek said in its most recent earnings statement on January 17, 2024, that the volume of condensate handled at the complex in Ust-Luga rose by 0.4 percent to 7 million tonnes.

Russian news agencies reported that two storage tanks and a pumping station had been damaged at Ust-Luga but that a fire had been brought under control with no one was reported injured.

Novatek said in a statement it had suspended some operations after the fire which it said was the result of “external influences”.

Novatek added that the production process at Novatek-Ust-Luga has been suspended and a damage assessment process had started.

Analysts note that Russia and Ukraine have been targeting each other’s energy infrastructure in drone strikes designed to disrupt supply lines and logistics since the conflict began in February 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine.

The Ust-Luga port area was also well known for its connections to the former Gazprom-operated natural gas Nord Stream pipelines that are no longer in operation.

Nord Stream gas

The Nord Stream pipelines were ruptured in September 2022 in still unexplained sabotage attacks that halted all Russian pipeline gas exports to Germany and the European Union.

The Nord Stream II pipeline bypassed EU members Poland and Lithuania, as well as the traditional pipeline transit nation of Ukraine on its 1,200-kilometres route from Ust-Luga to Greifswald near the Baltic port of Lubmin in northeast Germany and carried 55 billion cubic metres of gas.

The other main Gazprom gas pipeline export route to Germany was the Nord Stream I pipeline which ran from Vyborg port in northwest Russia to the same German landfall near Lubmin, which is now the site of a German LNG import terminal.