LNG

Santos, the operator of two Australian LNG plants and the largest stakeholder in the Papua New Guinea export facility, has signed a new memorandum of understanding  aimed at securing stable energy in various projects with the Japan Bank for International Cooperation.

The French major TotalEnergies has signed an agreement with Sempra Infrastructure of the US and the other partners in the Cameron LNG plant in Louisiana for the development of the Hackberry Carbon Sequestration (HCS) project in Cameron Parish.

The other signatories to the deal are Japanese trading houses Mitsui & Co. and Mitsubishi Corp.

TotalEnergies said the HCS project was primarily designed for capture, transportation, and storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) from Cameron LNG.

“The CO2 will be captured by the acid gas removal units, dehydrated, compressed, and transported by pipeline about 10 kilometres away,” the French company explained.

“It will then be permanently stored in a saline aquifer using an injection well with a capacity of up to 2 million tons of CO2 per year,” added TotalEnergies.

Permits

The HCS project filed an application in August 2021 with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the construction permit of such an injection well and was the first accepted by the EPA in Louisiana.

“We are pleased to join forces with our partners to significantly reduce CO2 emissions at the Cameron LNG export terminal, thus enabling us to supply our customers with low-carbon LNG,” said Thomas Maurisse, Senior Vice President LNG at TotalEnergies.

Justin Bird, Chief Executive of Sempra Infrastructure, which operates the Cameron plant and holds the assets of two LNG export projcts in Mexico and at Port Arthur in Texas, said the company was pleased to be advancing the development of the Hackberry CO2 project.

“This project is expected to be among the first North America carbon-capture facilities designed to receive and store CO2 from multiple sources,” added Bird.

TotalEnergies noted that development of the Hackberry project remained subject to definitive agreements, obtaining all the necessary permits and with all partners reaching a final investment decision.

Expansion

Cameron LNG is also the subject of an expansion in the form of a single Train with a production capacity of around 6.75 million tonnes per annum, taking capacity over 20 MTPA.

The plant will also be subject to a debottlenecking process to increase the efficiency and output of the existing three liquefaction Trains.

Sempra has also now put the Port Arthur project in Texas back on the fast track route to development.

The proposed Port Arthur plant has all its regulatory permits and will be constructed on a 3,000-acre site in Jefferson County in Texas and with an initial 13.5 MTPA of production.

Novatek, the Russian natural gas company and operator of the Yamal plant and leader of the Arctic LNG II project, said a supplementary Train will come on stream at Yamal before year-end as the second project continues to advance.

Novatek said in a presentation distributed to investors that the Yamal facility had sent out almost 440 cargoes amounting to 32 million tonnes through April 2020.

A total of 29 nations had received Yamal LNG since the plant came on stream at the end of 2017.

The small-scale fourth Train at Yamal will produce 900,000 tonnes of LNG compared with the three larger Trains, which each have capacity of 5.5 million tonnes per annum.

When the supplementary Trains starts up in several month overall output at Yamal will be 17.4 MTPA.

As regards the Arctic LNG II project being developed with three gravity-based platforms on the Gydan Peninsula, the estimated capital expenditure for the joint venture is now put at the equivalent of US$21.3 billion.

Arctic LNG will produce 19.8 MTPA of LNG as well as gas concentrate from the principal feed-gas resources, the Utrenneye gas field.

Latest 2P reserve estimates for Utrenneye gas give resources of 1,180 billion cubic metres and with 62 million tonnes of condensate.

“More than 5,000 people at currently working at the field,” said the company.

‘They have completed the backfilling of the Gas Treatments Unit-1 for the first dome and well pads 1, 2, and 3 for production drilling,” it added.

“Official permits have been received to proceed with completing Dry Dock No. 1 and there is continued rock blasting at Dry Dock No. 2,” stated Novatek.

The Russian company holds 60 percent of the Arctic LNG project and four other 10 percent stakes are shared between various shareholders.

The 10 percent holdings belong to French major Total, which is also a shareholder in the Novatek company, China National Petroleum Corp., China National Offshore Corp. and a Japanese investor group comprising Mitsui & Co. and the government institution, the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (Jogmec).

Novatek also gave a brief overview of its third LNG facility, the small-scale Cryogas-Vysotsk plant on the Baltic Sea coast.

Novatek owns 51 percent of Cryogas-Vysotsk, which it acquired in 2017. The facility supplies mainly Russian customers, but also small-scale users in Scandinavian and northwest European markets.

The first quarter 2020 volumes sold by Cryogas-Vysotsk amounted to 112,000 tonnes of LNG, including 26 ship-loadings and 195 loadings by trucks .

The Cryogas-Vysotsk project capacity is 660,000 tonnes per annum of LNG.

Infrastructure includes a 42,000 cubic metres capacity storage tank and an offloading terminal designed to handle small-scale and medium-scale carriers with a capacity of up to 30,000 cubic metres.