Page 10 - FSUOGM Week 38

FSUOGM PIPELINES & TRANSPORT FSUOGM

Novatek gets $611mn Gazprombank

loan for LNG storage facilities

RUSSIA RUSSIAN LNG exporter Novatek has secured a Kamchatka terminal had failed to attract any
€522mn ($611mn) loan from state lender Gaz- bids.
The storage facilites prombank to build LNG floating storage facil- The terminals are due to come on stream just
will be installed at ities at transhipment terminals it is building in before the first train of Novatek’s 19.8mn tonne-
transhipment terminals Murmansk and Kamchatka. per-year Arctic LNG plant begins production in
in Murmansk and The facilities will be built at South Korea’s 2023. The plant’s two other trains are due to start
Kamchatka. Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineer- up in 2024 and 2026.
ing shipyard at a cost of $748mn. They will be The Arctic LNG-2 project, where Novatek
delivered ahead of the terminals’ launch at the is partnered with France’s Total, China’s CNPC
end of 2022. Gazprombank’s loan has a 16-year and CNOOC and Japan’s Mitsui and JOGMEC,
duration. has a cost of $21bn. The scheme has reportedly
Novatek is building the transhipment termi- lined up $9.5bn in financing from international
nals to ease the supply of LNG from its export banks, including some from France, China and
projects in the Russian Arctic to customers in Japan. Additional funding is expected to come
Europe and Asia. Specialised Arctic ice-class from domestic lenders including state-owned
LNG carriers will offload their cargoes at the Sberbank.
terminals for pick-up by standard LNG tankers, The rest will some from the project's equity
cutting both delivery times and costs. partners.
The transhipment facilities were previously While these funding arrangements at Arctic
projected to cost RUB700bn ($920mn) each. In LNG-2 are not yet finalised, Novatek has closed
August NewsBase reported that a second ten- financing deals for the construction of a fleet of
der held by Russian port operator to build the carriers to transport the project's gas. ™

Turkmenistan reiterates plan to start

building TAPI in Pakistan

TURKMENISTAN TURKMENISTAN on September 18 Muhammetmyrat Amanov.
announced its intention to launch construction The TAPI pipeline has been designed to
Progress on the pipeline of the Afghan segment of the Turkmenistan-Af- provide up to 33bn cubic metres per year of gas
is very unclear, given ghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline, from fields in eastern Turkmenistan. Gas flows
dubious claims by stretching from the Turkmen-Afghan border would go to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
Turkmen authorities. to the Herat offtake point in Afghanistan, The The Turkmen pipeline section is expected to cost
Express Tribune reported on September 19. $1bn, while the whole project is projected to cost
The announcement comes after news in Janu- $10bn. Some estimates show the costs balloon-
ary that work on laying the Afghan stretch of the ing to up to $22.5bn. Though Turkmenistan for-
1,814km-long TAPI natural gas pipeline faced a mally broke ground on the pipeline in December
six-month delay due to a land acquisition post- 2015, only limited ground work appears to have
ponement and other issues. Construction on taken place, despite claims to the contrary by
the 816km-long Afghan section of the pipeline Turkmen officials.
officially began in February 2018, but more than The Turkmen-led TAPI operating consor-
two years later no significant progress has been tium even announced in 2018 that the Turk-
made. The pipeline is expected to pass through men section was finished, with the bulk of the
Afghanistan’s Herat, Farah, Nimroz, Helmand work focus moving on to the Afghan section
and Kandahar provinces and be constructed of the pipeline. Yet in April 2019 Turkmenistan
alongside the Herat-to-Kandahar Highway. awarded a contract to Russian pipe mill Chelpipe
Turkmen authorities have assured Pakistan to supply the entire 214 km of pipes needed for
that it would address its concerns over “different the Turkmen section, casting doubt on official
issues” relating to the TAPI project, the report said. claims about the pipeline section’s completion.
A team led by Pakistan’s Special Assistant to The project has repeatedly failed to reach a
the Prime Minister on Petroleum Nadeem Babar financial close and is unlikely to reach it until
held talks on the project with a Turkmen delega- 2021. This means that the pipeline may not start
tion, headed by TAPI Pipeline Company CEO operating until 2023. ™

P10 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 38 23•September•2020