RUSSIA'S NOVATEK LNG 140 MMT
PLATTS - Russian independent gas producer Novatek sees the resource base at Northern Yamal and Gydan peninsulas as allowing for output of 140 million mt/year of LNG, CEO Leonid Mikhelson said Friday.
Novatek has led an increase in Russian LNG output in recent years, bringing three trains, with 5.5 million mt/year capacity each, onstream at its Yamal LNG project.
It has already started work on the follow-up 19.8 million mt/year Arctic LNG 2 project. The company plans to finalize project partners and take a final investment decision this year.
Mikhelson called for the creation of an LNG cluster in the region, saying Russia was technologically ready to set one up.
"By our estimates the resource base of Yamal and Gydan alone will allow for production of 140 million mt/year of LNG," Mikhelson said at an industry event in Moscow.
"Technologically we are already ready to target such aims," he said, adding the target would allow Russia to increase its market share to 20%.
Mikhelson said LNG projects already announced would bring sufficient capacity on stream to maintain Russia's 10% stake in the global market.
The development of the LNG projects was also likely to underpin Novatek's role as Russia's sixth-biggest liquids producer.
Novatek has not ruled out gas condensate production within the Arctic LNG-2 project could growing to 2 million mt/year, compared with 1.2 million mt/year seen initially, Russia's Prime news agency reported.
The upward revision followed the recent discovery of additional reserves in the project's resources area, the report quoted Mikhelson as saying.
The company can reconsider plans for liquids output as additional reserves of around 400 Bcm were discovered last year in the Jurassic horizon, with higher concentration of gas condensate, Mikhelson said, according to Prime.
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