Page 9 - FSUOGM Week 41 2019

FSUOGM COMMENTARY FSUOGM
son-in-law, Timur Kulibayev.
As part of Nur-Sultan’s gasification, Kazakh-
stan plans to construct an extensive gas distri- bution network across the city, install gas boilers in residential and public buildings and upgrade coal plants to run on gas. It also intends to install extra compressors along Saryarka in the future, raising its capacity to 3 bcm per year, and extend it further north to Petropavlovsk, near the Rus- sian border.
Kazakhstan’s push to expand gas use over the years has led to demand nearly doubling over the past decade, reaching 19.4 bcm last year. This has not only helped curb pollution, but also utilise associated gas produced at major oilfields in its western regions that would otherwise have been flared.
The Central Asian state also began large-scale gas shipments to China in 2017, and last year its pipeline operator KazTransGaz (KTG) reached a deal with China’s state-owned PetroChina to double annual supplies to 10 bcm. However,
Edinburgh-based consultancy Wood Mackenzie cast doubt in a research note late last month that this goal would be achieved.
“Seasonal domestic demand will challenge Kazakhstan’s ability to respond in full to China’s peak winter needs,” WoodMac analyst Ashley Sherman said, stating the agency did not expect gas exports to China to exceed 8.27 bcm.
Initially, all gas for the Chinese contract was sourced from CNPC AktobeMunaiGas, a Chi- nese-Kazakh joint venture operating in western in Kazakhstan, Sherman told NewsBase. But to come closer to meeting the full 10 bcm per year supply target, gas will need to come some of Kazakhstan’s largest upstream ventures, such as the Kashagan project.
Kazakh gas production reached 24.4 bcm last year, giving the country a surplus of only 5 bcm for sale overseas. But the difference is expected to widen this year thanks to higher output at Kara- chaganak and Kashagan, two of the country’s biggest oil and gas projects.™
PIPELINES & TRANSPORT
Gazprom Neft mulls LNG bunkering
RUSSIA
GAZPROM Neft, the oil arm of Russia’s natural gas giant Gazprom, is looking to make a foray into LNG bunkering in 2021.
The company already has extensive marine bunkering operations offered at 37 ports world- wide, with fuel sales volumes reaching 2.92mn tonnes in 2018. But new IMO shipping rules reducing the permissible sulphur content in marine fuels globally from 3.5% currently to 0.5% from next year could put pressure on its business.
Beyond supply of cleaner oil-based fuels, Gazprom Neft also sees LNG as a solution. The company aims to launch its first pilot LNG refu- elling vessel in the second quarter of 2021, its head of marine bunkering Alexei Medvedev said at a conference in Moscow on October 10.
Gazprom Neft will commission two more LNG bunkering vessels within the next decade, according to Medvedev, who noted that global demand for LNG bunkering could grow by
40mn tonnes per year.
“Experts’ forecasts regarding the demand
for LNG bunkering vary significantly, but are mainly in the range of 10 to 40mn tonnes of LNG per year in the long term until 2030,” he said.
Gazprom Neft’s preparations to enter the global LNG bunkering market follow similar moves by its parent company Gazprom and its independent Russian rival Novatek. Gazprom plans to launch a 1.5mn tpy liquefaction plant 150 km northwest of St Petersburg next year that will primarily serve as a basis for Baltic Sea bun- kering operations. It has drawn up blueprints for two similar plants on the Black Sea and in the Far East but is yet to finalise these projects.
Novatek, on the other hand, operates a smaller 660,000 tpy plant, also on the Baltic Sea, in partnership with Gazprom’s banking arm Gazprombank. The capacity of the Vysotsk plant, launched in April, will potentially be enlarged by a further 1.1mn tpy by the end of 2020.™
Gazprom Neft currently offers bunkering with oil-based fuels.
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