Page 12 - GLNG Week 01

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Novatek expands on Gydan, launches new field
PROJECTS & COMPANIES
RUSSIA’S Novatek secured exploration rights in December to a new tract of land in the country’s Arctic region, while also launching a new gas project further south.
The company reported on December 27 it had won a 27-year exploration and production licence for the Bukharinsky block, which covers 2,447 square km of the Gydan Peninsula and Taz and Ob bays. The area holds a potential 1.19tn cubic metres of gas and 74mn tonnes of liquids, it said.
Bukharinsky borders the Trekhbugorny licence area, which Novatek obtained in late 2014, as well as the Severo-Khanaveyskoye gas field, to which it won rights in a state contest last August.
The Gydan Peninsula has become Novatek’s main focus for development. It is here where the company is constructing its next LNG export terminal, the 19.8mn tonne per year (tpy) Arctic LNG-2, expected on stream in 2023.
Novatek is now scouring the peninsula for new gas resources to underpin additional export projects, with the goal of hiking its LNG produc- tion capacity to 70mn tpy by 2030. The company currently produces around 17mn tpy of LNG at its three-train Yamal LNG terminal on the Yamal
Peninsula, west of Gydan.
To ensure lower-cost year-round delivery of
its LNG, Novatek has also been transhipping the gas from its specialised ice-class carriers to conventional tankers at European tankers. It reported on December 27 that it had started begun using a new 180,000-cubic metre storage tank at the port of Zeebrugge in Belgium for this purpose. The unit was built under a contract between Novatek and Belgian gas firm Fluxys.
Novatek also announced on December 19 the start of production at the North-Russkoye gas field, located in the Tazovsky district of the Yamalo-Nenets region. The field is anticipated to flow 5.7bn cubic metres of gas and 700,000 tpy of condensate at full capacity.
Unlike its projects on Gydan and Yamal, North-Russkoye will serve the domestic market only, where Novatek mostly caters to power gen- eration firms and industrial consumers.
North-Russkoye is one of four fields that comprise Novatek’s North-Russky develop- ment, and was the first to enter production. The others – Dorogovskoye, East-Tazovskoye and Kharbeyskoye – are slated to start up in 2020 and 2021, lifting output from the cluster to 13 bcm per year.™
MIDDLE EAST
Qatar signs LNG supply deal with Kuwait
POLICY
STATE-OWNED Qatar Petroleum (QP) has struck a deal to supply up to 3mn tonnes per year (tpy) of LNG to Kuwait over a period of 15 years. In a joint statement with Kuwait Petro- leum Corp. (KPC), QP said deliveries would begin to Kuwait’s port of al-Zour in 2022. Kuwait currently imports LNG via a floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) at the port of Mina Al-Ahmadi.
The deal comes as Kuwait is seeking sources of supply to meet its growing energy needs, particularly for power generation. The country is already importing more gas to meet power demand, especially in the summer months when the use of air-conditioning systems leads to sharp increases in consumption. The coun- try is also focusing on ramping up domestic gas production as part of its growth strategy up to 2040, but there are concerns that this will not go far enough.
“Whilst KPC is working towards increasing local natural gas production, there remains a pressing need to secure imports of natural gas supplies,” Kuwaiti Oil Minister Khaled al-Fadhel
said in the statement. He also said the deal would help his country to meet its requirement for cleaner sources of energy, as well as contribut- ing to reducing emissions and improving local air quality.
“This agreement extends Qatar’s long-stand- ing LNG supply relationship with Kuwait well into the 2030s and highlights our commitment to meeting Kuwait’s LNG requirements,” Qatari Minister of State for Energy Affairs Saad Sherida al-Kaabi, who is also the president and CEO of QP, said. “We are confident that the exceptional reliability of our LNG supplies will provide KPC with the required flexibility and supply security to fuel the State of Kuwait’s impressive growth.”
It was reported this week that Australia had overtaken Qatar to become the world’s largest exporter of LNG in 2019. However, Qatar is intending to boost its output of LNG to 126mn tpy by 2027. Its operational capacity is currently around 77mn tpy. Even with the US’ LNG pro- duction capacity also growing, Qatar is pre- dicted to regain the top spot globally by the end of the 2020s.™
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w w w. N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 01 09•January•2020