LNG

Oct 12 (LNGJ) - Technip Energies, the engineering company whose current contracts include the Arctic LNG II export project in Russia, has created a joint venture, Nova Energies, to become the main carbon-capture project firm in Russia with Arctic LNG engineering partner, the Russian company Nipigas. The Nova joint venture has been chosen by Russia’s largest petrochemicals company, the Sibur Group, to study potential carbon-capture solutions at its largest plant.

   “We are pleased to announce that the Nipigas team in partnership with Technip Energies has begun the development of a project to reduce carbon emissions of the largest petrochemical enterprise in our country and at the main production asset of Sibur,” said Dmitry Evstafiev, General Director of Nipigas. “This project gives Nova Energies an opportunity to contribute to the development and to take a leading position in the market for the energy transition in our country,” added Evstafiev.

Russian natural gas company Gazprom said more than 30,000 workers were on site to complete the Amur Gas Processing Plant, part of the “Power of Siberia” project already bringing pipeline gas to China and with an affiliated LNG liquefaction plant to fuel trucks carrying containers of liquid helium for export.

The Amur venture is more than 70 percent complete and Gazprom said a recruitment process for the GPP’s future full-time staff was underway.

“Other aspects of the project include the building of a small-scale liquefaction plant for LNG trucking,” said Gazprom.

The company said in its update report that the first two Amur processing lines would be on stream in 2021.

“Start-up and commissioning operations continue at the first two Amur gas trains and external thermal insulation is being installed on the core equipment,” added Gazprom.

“This is the final stage of preparations for load testing,” stated the company.

The construction of the Amur GPP is one of the largest infrastructure projects of Gazprom in Russia’s Far East.

During the 2020 navigation season, 50 pieces of large equipment weighing a total of some 8,000 tons were delivered by sea and river vessels to the Amur GPP’s wharf.

The GPP will receive heat and electricity from the Svobodny thermal power plant.

The construction of the power plant’s main building and structures is already finished. In December 2020, the “Power of Siberia” gas pipeline started feeding gas to the TPP for the purpose of start-up and commissioning of the gas-using equipment.

The Amur plant will process multi-component natural gas received via the “Power of Siberia” gas pipeline from the Yakutia and Irkutsk gas production centres,.

“Valuable components extracted in the course of processing will be used as feedstock for the petrochemical and other industries,” explained Gazprom.

The Amur GPP is being built near the town of and will have final design capacity to process 42 billion cubic metres of per annum of natural gas.

The GPP will include the world’s largest helium production facilities with an annual capacity of up to 60 million cubic metres.

The plant will have six production trains. While the first two lines will start in the coming year, the other four would be consecutively put in operation before the end of 2024.

In addition to natural gas and helium, the GPP’s commercial products will include ethane, propane, butane, and pentane-hexane fraction.

A Gazprom subsidiary called, Pererabotka Blagoveshchensk, is the project company for the Amur GPP. Construction management is being carried out by NIPIGAZ, part of the Sibur Group.

gazprom said a central link in the export system for commercial helium, one of the components that will be extracted at Amur, will be the Logistics Centre for servicing thermally-insulated containers.

“The Centre, which is being set up near the city of Vladivostok, will be the world’s largest hub for delivering liquid helium to the global market,” Gazprom explained.

At present, construction of the hub’s off-site facilities is finished, the core and auxiliary process equipment is installed, and electricity is now being supplied to the Logistics Centre.

“A natural gas liquefaction unit is currently being built with the aim of refueling trucks that will carry the containers,” said Gazprom

The pipeline gas supplies for China started operations in December 2019 via Gazprom’s “Power of Siberia” trunkline from the Chayandinskoye gas field.

In the year since the launch of “Power of Siberia”, Gazprom said a total of 3.84 Bcm had been supplied to China via the trunkline, which was less than the expected 5 Bcm.

Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corp. have signed a 30-year supply agreement for Russian gas to be supplied via the eastern route amounting to 38 Bcm per annum once incremental increases had been met over a period of five years.

Gazprom said an engineering, procurement and construction contract as well as supply accords had been signed as part of the Baltic LNG and chemicals complex development at Ust-Luga, west of St Petersburg.