LNG

The Netherlands said that almost a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, the country had virtually stopped importing energy from Russia, though received about the same amount of Russian LNG in 2022 than in the previous year and was looking at setting up new LNG import terminals and joint purchasing global cargoes with the European Union.

Two liquefied natural gas LNG carriers, the “Boris Davydov” and the “Rudolf Samoilovich” after safely completing the final leg of their East-West voyages on the Northern Sea Route which has become ice-bound earlier in the 2021-2022 winter season.

“Two LNG carriers Boris Davydov (in the Laptev Sea) and Rudolf Samoilovich (in the East Siberian Sea) continue their voyages to the port of Sabetta without ice-breaker support,” said the NSR information office.

The 172,000 cubic metres capacity “Boris Davydov” was due to berth on November 25 at the Novatek-operated Yamal LNG export plant at Sabetta in northern Siberia.

The vessel had previously delivered an LNG shipment to the Chinese port of Jiangsu, according to the Russian NSR data.

The “Rudolf Samoilovich” was also heading for Sabetta and is scheduled to arrive on November 27. The ship had last visited the Russian Far East port of Nakhodka, though had delivered a shipment of LNG to the Tangshan terminal in the Caofeidian Industrial Zone of Hebei province.

Speed

“At the time of the report, their speed was 16-18 knots,” added the NSR body.

However, another vessel, the “Mechanic Pustoshnyy”, is drifting in the Laptev Sea, and a second ship, the “Mikhail Somov”, is adrift in the western part of the Vilkitskiy Strait.

The report concluded that in the western part of the NSR, the icebreaker “Yamal” finished the escorting of the ships “Yurii Arshenevskiy” and “Vitus Bering” at Cape Zhelaniya.

The Yamal plant is the focus of NSR energy shipping activity. It has three liquefaction Trains on stream, each with nameplate capacity of 5.5 million tonnes per annum, as well as a smaller fourth Train with 900,000 tonnes of output, taking overall production to 17.4 MTPA.

All the LNG vessels serving Yamal LNG are around 172,000 cubic metres capacity and have ice-class Arc7 notation.

The Arc7 design allows ice-class LNG carriers to break through ice that is up to 2 metres thick.

The Russian shipbuilding company, Zvezda Shipbuilding, is building a series of 15 next-generation Arc7 ice-class LNG vessels for Russian natural gas company Novatek’s Arctic LNG II project under construction on the Gydan Peninsula in the same region as the Yamal facility.

These newbuild Arc7 LNG vessels have increased ice-breaking and manoeuvring characteristics compared with the existing fleet used by the Novatek-operated Yamal LNG project.

The 15 carriers will be registered and flagged under the Russian Federation and operated by the Russian crew when delivered. 

Novatek, the operator of the Yamal LNG plant in Arctic Russian and developer of the Arctic LNG II joint venture, has won the auctions for two subsoil licence areas, including the Arkticheskoye and Neytinskoye gas fields on the Yamal Peninsula in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Region of Northern Siberia.

Novatek’s bidding was carried out by the wholly owned subsidiary Yamal LNG Resources.

The Arkticheskoye and Neytinskoye fields have combined estimated hydrocarbon reserves of 2.9 billion barrels of oil equivalent, including 413 billion cubic metres of natural gas and 28 million tons of liquids, according to the Russian hydrocarbon classification system.

The licence terms are for 27 years and resulted in cumulative one-time payments for the subsoil use of 13.15 billion Russian roubles ($180 million).

“The new licence areas are located in close proximity to Novatek’s existing assets on the Yamal Peninsula and expand the company’s resource base for implementing LNG projects,” said Novatek.

The current Yamal LNG feed gas comes mainly from the South Tambey (Tambeyskoye) gas field, located near the port of Sabetta on the Yamal Peninsula.

South Tambey contains 72 commercially viable gas layers, including 33 shallow dry gas layers and 28 deeper gas layers. The depth of these layers varies from 900 metres to 2,850m.

This means the new fields to be developed in the future will not need to come in stream for about 15 to 20 years to supply Yamal LNG, though another project could be developed from the resources.

Reserves

The South Tambey field’s estimated reserves stand at 44 trillion cubic feet of gas and 550 million barrels of condensate, while the proven reserves stand at 1.26 Tcf of gas and 51.6MT of gas condensate.

South Tambey is capable of producing up to 27 Bcm of natural gas a year over 20 years.

A total of over 200 directional production wells are planned to be drilled for the full development of the field.

Novatek’s upstream activities and LNG projects are concentrated mainly in the prolific Yamal-Nenets region, which is the world’s largest natural gas producing area, accounting for around 80 percent of Russia’s gas output.

The existing Novatek Yamal LNG facility has annual output of over 18 million tonnes power annum

The company also expects that all three liquefaction Trains at the Arctic LNG II plant will come on stream on the Gydan Peninsula in a two-year time span from 2023.

The start-up of the first Arctic LNG II Train is planned for 2023, the second in 2024 and the third Train in 2025.

Arctic LNG II will produce 19.8 million tonnes per annum of LNG from the principal feed-gas resources, the Utrenneye gas fields.

The new Arctic plant involves the installation of three gravity-based structures in the Gulf of Ob and related LNG storage facilities of a combined 687,000 cubic metres capacity.

Novatek is the largest independent natural gas producer in Russia and is second only to Gazprom.