LNG

Technip Energies, the European LNG and energy project engineers, said their joint venture has been awarded an engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning (EPCC) contract by QatarEnergy for the onshore facilities of the North Field South Project (NFS) in the Arabian Gulf.

Technip said its partner for the award is the Middle East-based company Consolidated Contractors Company.

“This award will cover the delivery of two mega-Trains, each with a capacity of 8 million tonnes per annum,” said Technip.

The company added that the work would include a large carbon-capture and sequestration CCS) facility of 1.5 MTPA, leading to 25 percent-plus reduction of greenhouse gas emissions when compared with similar LNG facilities.

The NFS expansion project will produce about 16 MTPA of additional LNG, increasing Qatar’s total production from 110 to 126 MTPA after the North Field East (NFE) project is completed as well.

Mega-Trains

“We are extremely honored to have been awarded by QatarEnergy this mega-LNG project, along with our long-standing partner CCC, a leading construction company for LNG Trains,” explained Arnaud Pieton, Chief Executive of Technip.

“This award is a testament to the trust, extent, and strength of our relationship with QatarEnergy,” added Pieton.

“This new project also reflects our leadership in the LNG market as well as our proven ability to integrate technologies towards low carbon LNG, critical in solving the trilemma for affordable, available and sustainable energy,” declared the CEO.

Technip has been active with a local presence since 1986 in Qatar, which it described as “a strategic country” for the company.

Global LNG engineering firms like Technip are benefiting from the future forecasts of high demand for LNG cargoes. The company posted net profits of €320.2 million ($340.6M) for 2022 compared with €252.4M in 2021.

The company also had a contract backlog of €12.75Bln at the end of December 2022.

The company’s most recent plant to come on stream was the Coral South floating LNG hull that started up in November 2022 offshore Mozambique.

Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said he expected Chinese banks to sign financing deals for the Arctic LNG II export project already under construction on the Gydan Peninsula in northern Siberia and was also seeking the resolution of a tax dispute involving China at the Yamal LNG plant.

The Arctic LNG II project being developed on the Gydan Peninsula in northern Siberia has amended a project financing agreement signed earlier in 2021 with several Russian banks to increase the maximum allowed under the facility

Sovcomflot said a keel-laying ceremony was held at the Zvezda Shipbuilding yard in Russia’s Far East for a new Arctic liquefied natural gas vessel ordered by the Russian tanker and LNG carrier fleet owner.

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.

July 11 (LNGJ) - Russian natural gas company and Yamal LNG plant operator Novatek and JSC Atomenergomash, a mechanical engineering division of Russia’s nuclear body Rosatom State Corp., have signed a memorandum of understanding on forming a strategic partnership for localizing the fabrication of equipment for LNG production

   The accord notes the results already achieved on the fabrication of coil-wound heat exchangers and medium-tonnage cryogenic pumps and establishes obligations for both parties to cooperate on the design, manufacture and testing of high-tonnage cryogenic pumps. Novatek and Atomenergomash said they intended to pursue long-term cooperation to localize the fabrication of pumps, heat exchangers and other equipment for Novatek’s LNG projects at the facilities of Atomenergomash, which manufactures components for all Russian-design nuclear power plants currently under construction in Russia and elsewhere.

China National Petroleum Corp., the largest Chinese oil and gas company, said it planned to ramp up production of domestic natural gas to meet more than 50 percent of its primary energy output by 2020 to support the clean-air policies that have also boosted the need for LNG and pipeline imports.

“Domestic natural gas output is expected to reach 55 percent of domestic output by 2025,” said a CNPC statement.

The company, whose Hong Kong-listed subsidiary is PetroChina, said its natural gas production reached 138.02 billion cubic metres last year, of which 109.37 Bcm was produced in China, a year-on-year increase of 5.9 percent.

CNPC said it had also increased imports of overseas pipeline natural gas and LNG, while striving to further improve its own production capacity in the coming years.

The National Development and Reform Commission in May 2019 released new oil and gas liberalization measures to require facility operators to open up access to their oil and gas infrastructure to free up the flow of natural gas.

The new measures follow the government's announcement earlier in 2019 that it plans to establish a national pipeline company as part of China’s move to accelerate the opening up of its domestic oil and gas markets and to extend the gas network to provide a nationwide alternative to coal.

These measures are all part of the clean-air policy that will strive to replace coal use with natural gas in the domestic market.

This energy reform comes as the start of Russian supplies from the “Power of Siberia” natural gas pipeline is scheduled to start in December 2019.

CNPC and Russian company Gazprom have signed a 30-year agreement for Russian gas to be supplied via the eastern route, the “Power of Siberia” gas pipeline, and would amount in volumes of 38 Bcm per annum.

CNPC's pipeline contract with Gazprom is in addition to its stake in the latest Russian LNG export project, the Yamal plant on the Arctic coast of Siberia. Yamal is operated by the second-largest Russian natural gas company, Novatek.

The “Power of Siberia” pipeline is around 97 percent complete with more than 2,000 kilometres now installed and connected in the section running from Chayandinskoye, the gas fields centre in the Russian Far East, to the Chinese border in the Amur Region.

CNPC also said that its shale-gas production in the southwest province of Sichuan reached 4.27 Bcm in 2018, up 40 percent compared with the previous year and it will be further developed for purposes of national energy security.

The daily shale-gas output in southern Sichuan has reached 20.11 million cubic metres, a year-on-year increase of 119.3 percent.

The CNPC statement cited CNPC Chairman Wang Yilin as also saying the emissions from energy output and use had declined.

He said emissions of ammonia nitrogen, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides decreased by 7 percent, 7.6 percent and 7.2 percent respectively year-on-year in 2018.

The company said it would invest another 31.9 billion yuan ($4.6 billion) in the 2019-2020 period to strengthen pollution prevention and boost the nation’s transformation to lower carbon emissions.