Page 5 - FSUOGM Week 23 2021

FSUOGM COMMENTARY FSUOGM

Russian President
Vladimir Putin speaking
at the SPIEF event in St
Petersburg.

US financial firm MSCI. although it discussed hydrogen and other
Novatek agreed at SPIEF to co-operate with low-carbon technologies with a number of its
its long-term partner and minority shareholder partners, including Germany's Uniper and
in Total in reducing emissions from LNG facil- France's Engie.
ities. The pair are partnered at the Yamal LNG Gazprom's oil and gas arm Gazprom Neft
plant and upcoming Arctic LNG-2 facility, and struck a similar deal to Novatek with Severstal on
they want to ensure these facilities’ gas is as hydrogen and decarbonisation, and another one
clean as possible, amid increasing scrutiny from with fellow steelmaker EVRAZ. It also signed a
investors. MoU with Royal Dutch Shell, its closest interna-
The partners plan to achieve this by making tional partner, on the possible use of CCS at their
power generation at their facilities more effi- joint assets, and the production of hydrogen.
cient, using more renewable energy and possi- The agreement also covers general co-operation
bly switching gas turbines to run on hydrogen in the upstream sector. Shell separately agreed
instead. An ambition is to produce carbon-neu- on the use of green energy in Russia supplied
tral LNG, which has seen a surge in popularity by Fortum, which boasts the country’s largest
in recent months. renewable power portfolio.
Novatek signed a separate memorandum Gazprom Neft has pointed to the expertise of
of understanding (MoU) to acquire renewable its Serbian subsidiary NIS in collecting, process-
electricity in Russia from Finland’s Fortum, in ing and re-injecting CO2 since 2015. The CO2
order to lower its Scope 2 emissions. The wind that NIS extracts at gas fields in Serbia is injected
power provided by Fortum will be used at into developed reservoirs at a depth of over 2,500
Novatek’s small-scale Cyrogas-Vysotsk plant in metres.
north-west Russia. Rosneft, meanwhile, signed an agreement
Novatek CEO Leonid Mikhelson said the on co-operating with Baker Hughes in carbon
purchase of power from Fortum represented management. Under the deal, the pair will jointly
“one of the most promising mitigation solutions.” develop, test and use advantage technologies for
The Russian gas company is also taking steps carbon management. They will weigh up using
to help its customers decarbonise. It signed a technologies and equipment to detect, measure,
MoU at SPIEF with Russian steelmaker Sev- assess and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emis-
erstal, which buys gas from Novatek, to help it sions, primarily methane, at Rosneft production
reduce emissions from operations using hydro- facilities.
gen and carbon capture and storage (CCS) Lukoil agreed with Baker Hughes on intro-
technology. ducing advanced technologies to detect and
Steelmaking is considered a tricky sector to reduce GHG emissions and improving energy
decarbonise because it is so energy intensive. efficiency across the Russian oil company’s pro-
But replacing gas with clean hydrogen as the fuel duction chain. It also agreed to co-operate with
used at furnaces has been pitched as a solution. nuclear and renewable power group Rosatom
Under the MoU, Novatek and Severstal will look on the use of renewable energy and carbon-free
at developing blue hydrogen, derived from nat- technologies.
ural gas with CO2 emissions from the process Lukoil also hailed the launch of a second
captured and stored. 20-MW solar power plant in the Volgograd
region. The plant, together with a 10-MW solar
Other players generation unit installed in 2018, will provide
Russia's largest gas company Gazprom did not electricity for the company’s oil refinery in the
announce any partnerships on decarbonisation, area. ™

Week 23 09•June•2021 www. NEWSBASE .com P5