Page 6 - FSUOGM Week 50 2019

FSUOGM PIPELINES & TRANSPORT FSUOGM
Naftogaz denies claims of prelim transit deal with Gazprom
UKRAINE
A compromise still alludes the pair.
UKRAINE’S Naftogaz walked back reports of a preliminary gas transit deal with Russia’s gas behemoth Gazprom on December 16, saying progress had been made in talks but the outlines of a deal are still elusive.
Naftogaz’s executive director Yuriy Vitrenko told Platts he was not aware of “any, even pre- liminary, agreement on a long-term transit deal.”
“We have a preliminary agreement on poten- tial instruments (contractual structure) that can be used for transit if there is a deal,” Vitrenko said.
Gazprom and Naftogaz held a round of bilat- eral talks in Vienna on Friday, where Vitrenko met with Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller, after which Russian news agency RIA Novosti para- phrased Vitrenko as saying that some “prelimi- nary agreements” had been reached.
However, talks are ongoing and Vitrenko said that, “We now have to work extremely hard even to finalise the legal structure, because there are still open questions.”
The current gas transit and supply deal is due to expire at the end of the year and the two sides
are trying to find a compromise. Both have built up signficant reserves of gas in storage and Naf- togaz told bne IntelliNews in an interview that its base case scenario is that Ukraine will be cut off from Russian gas supplies on January 1 2020.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Paris at the Normandy Four summit on Decem- ber 9 and held bilateral talks on the sidelines where the gas issue was broached.
Zelenskiy claimed that the negotiations had been “unblocked” and said in statement over the weekend that a new temporary deal could be signed before the end of the year.
“I think there is a very high probability that the contract on gas transit will be signed [by the end of 2019],” Zelenskiy said as cited by Tass.
“A contract on gas transit is important not only for Ukraine, but for Europe as well,” he added.
Zelenskiy said he discussed this issue with Putin at the Normandy Four summit in Paris on December 9. “I see that everyone is interested in signing a document,” he noted. ™
Yamal LNG’s entire carrier fleet now in service
RUSSIA
Yamal LNG’s 15-strong fleet of icebreakers enable lower-cost all- round shipment from the terminal.
YAMAL LNG’s 15-strong fleet of Arc7-class icebreaking LNG carriers are now all in service, with its final vessel having started operations last week.
The Yakov Gakkel loaded its first LNG cargo at the Russian port of Sabetta on December 11 and is bound for China, the Yamal LNG operat- ing company said in a statement. It marks Yamal LNG’s 354th cargo of super-cooled gas since the export plant’s launch in December 2017.
The project, situated on Russia’s northern Yamal Peninsula, is operated by Russia’s Novatek in partnership with France’s Total and China’s CNPC and Silk Road Fund.
The Arc7 carriers are capable of breaking through Russia’s thick Arctic ice without escorts, lowering the cost of round-year shipments. In its statement, Yamal LNG said that having all 15 ves- sels in service created “additional opportunities from 2020 for optimising the project’s logistics both westbound and eastbound, including the more extensive use of the Northern Sea Route.”
The Yakov Gakkel was built at the Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering Okpo shipyard in South Korea. It is one of six vessels in the fleet owned by a joint venture between
US-listed Teekay LNG and China’s Cosco Dalian. The latter was recently targeted by US sanctions for delivering Iranian crude to China. But its joint venture with Teekay LNG was given a waiver so Yamal LNG’s operations could continue.
Monaco-based Dynagas owns another five carriers in Yamal LNG’s fleet, while Japan’s MOL operates three and Russia’s Sovcomflot the remaining one. Each vessel can store up to 170,000 cubic metres of LNG.
Yamal LNG has contributed to a boom in global LNG supplies over the past two years, with its first three 5.5mn tonne per year (tpy) trains reaching their nameplate capacity within a year of its start-up. Their output has since risen further, totalling 16.5mn tonnes in the first 11 months of this year and on track to reach 18mn tonnes by year-end, according to Yamal LNG.
A fourth, 900,000 tpy train is also due to be commissioned in early 2020, showcasing Novatek’s patented Arctic Cascade liquefaction technology. The company’s ultimate goal is to deploy Arctic Cascade at all future LNG projects, replacing the foreign technology it currently uses. ™
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 50 18•December•2019