LNG

Sakhalin Energy, the operator of the Sakhalin II LNG plant in the Russian Far East supplying four North Asian nations, has started scheduled maintenance at infrastructure facilities and is hopeful of having minimum disruption to exports despite changing loading arms.

“Around 2,500 technical staff from various regions of Russia will be engaged in operations at the facilities,” explained Roman Dashkov, Chief Executive of Sakhalin Energy.

“As part of the shutdown, for the first time in Russia, there will be a replacement of loading arms performed at the LNG jetty of the liquefaction plant,” said the CEO.

The Sakhalin plant has been on stream since 2009 and last year prodcued 10.8 million tonnes of lNG.

However, the joint venture run by Russian natural gas company Gazprom has yet to progress on construction of a long-promised third liquefaction Train at Prigorodnoye on Sakhalin Island.

The main shareholders in the plant are Gazprom with 50 percent, Royal Dutch Shell with 27.5 percent and Japanese company Mitsui & Co. and Mitsubishi with 12.5 percent and 10 percent respectively.

In the past year the Japanese have taken delivery of 51.6 percent of Sakhalin volumes, a further 17.4 percent was shipped to Taiwan, 16.3 percent to South Korea and 14.1 percent to China.

Since the start-up of the plant, Sakhalin Energy has produced and shipped about 130 million tonnes of LNG as of early May 2021 and more than 2,000 cargoes.

The company said that the Russian plant had already begun the maintenance campaign on the PA-B plant, the largest oil and gas production platform of the Sakhalin project.

The PA-B platform is located about 12 kilometres offshore the northeast of the island in waters depths of 32 metres.

“At the platform, it is intended to perform an annual purging of the hydrocarbon multiphase flow separation vessels, a repair of the produced water filters, maintenance of two gas compressors, including a gearbox inspection at one of them, and a number of other maintenance tasks,” explained the company.

The workers would then proceed with the scheduled shutdown of the facilities in the integrated gas chain, including the LUN-A platform.

The Sakhalin maintenance programme is expected to be completed by the start of July.

The Gazprom-run Sakhalin liquefied natural gas export plant in the Russian Far East has started maintenance work and has shut down one of its processing Trains.

Sakhalin Energy, the plant operating company, had originally planned for work to be done on both Trains at the same time, but logistical difficulties occurred caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting safety measures.

The main buyers of Sakhalin cargoes are Japanese, South Korean and Chinese energy companies.

The shareholders in the plant are Gazprom with 50 percent plus one share, Royal Dutch Shell with 27.5 percent and Japanese companies Mitsui and Co. and Mitsubishi Corp. with 12.5 percent and 10 percent respectively.

Under its new plans some scheduled maintenance work has now been postponed until 2021.

“Due to current economic downturn and the pandemic challenge, we had to modify the initial turnaround scope,” said a Sakhalin Energy statement.

“To ensure the safety of our people and reliable production, the company has decided to follow the original timeline, but shut down only one Train at the LNG plant,” the company added.

LNG production at the two-Train Sakhalin plant has remained at just over 11 million tonnes per annum in recent years. The plant was Russia's first and came on stream in 2009.

The newer Yamal LNG plant started up in 2017 with output of 16.5 MTPA from three Trains and is operated by independent Russian natural gas company Novatek.

A long-planned expansion at the Sakhalin plant and the construction of a third liquefaction Train has so far failed to take place.

However, Gazprom notes that regular de-bottlenecking and equipment adjustments over the past 11 years has seen output raised to more than 11 MTPA from the nameplate capacity of 9.6 MTPA.

LNG cargoes produced and marketed at Sakhalin are supplied on a free-on-board basis and shipped by the company’s LNG carriers, “Grand Elena”, “Grand Aniva” and “Grand Mereya”.

Two other vessels, the “Amur River” and the “Ob River” carriers are used by the company under long-term charter agreements.