End of March 2019, Novatek is to launch a medium-scale LNG plant in Vyssotsk on the Baltic with a capacity of 600,000 tons, mostly for bunkering purposes, informed RF President Vladimir Putin Chairman and CEO of Novatek Leonid Mikhelson during the recent meeting at the end of February.
“The first line will be 600,000 tons, and next year we will probably decide on two more lines for another 1.2 million tons. Bunkering services are gaining momentum in the Baltic, so I think that there will be demand for these services”, he is quoted as saying by the RF President’s press service.
L.Mikhelson also said that the Yamal LNG plant launched in n December 2017 reached its full capacity of 16.5 mn tons in December 2018, and as of today, a tanker is loaded every 33 hours with 70,000 tons of LNG. The second LNG project that the company has started, Arctic LNG-2, has a capacity of 19.8 mn tons.
He also informed the President about the projects the company is developing in Murmansk region. “We have started building a facility where we will build marine platforms. Our investments in Murmansk Region are estimated at some 120 billion rubles. We will launch the first stage of this facility in mid-2019. There will be two docks – here are the measurements, and this is how the liquefaction train over 300 m long, 150 m wide and 70 m high will look. It will weigh 620,000 tons. The train will be towed by sea and stationed at the field. These trains will be factory produced”.
“Novatek’s strategy provides for producing 57 million tons of LNG by 2030. I am citing the figure now because we are confident of our ability to reach this target. Moreover, an upward revision of the figure to 70 million tons is possible in a year or two”, L.Mikhelson said.
“Now to the Northern Sea Route. As per your May Executive Order, under which the transportation of cargo by this route should be increased to 80 million tons, we expect our cargo to account for 50 percent of the total, or over 46 million tons. We plan to build two reloading centres, one in Murmansk Region and the other in Kamchatka”.a