According to the plans presented by the company, the Pechora LNG-plant could produce 2.6 million tons of LNG annually, with a possibility to increase the production later on to 5.2 million tons, reports Reuters.
According to the company’s own website, the LNG to be produced from Kumzhinskoye and Korovinskoye fields is supposed to be exported to countries in the Asia-Pacific region, with LNG tankers from the Pechora River, through the Barents Sea, Atlantic, and Suez Canal to Asia.
€2.6 billion investment plan
The LNG-plant with all needed infrastructure will cost more than $4 billion (€2.6 billion). The plant can be opened b 2016 and the planned operation lifetime is 30 years.
CH-Oil&Gaz says the final decision shall be made taking in account economic efficiency and long-term trends in the markets of energy resources and products of gas-chemicals as well as conditions of entry of strategic partners into the project.
The company says more than 700 jobs will be created within the building and operation of the plant.
The Kumshinskoye gas field is located some 60 kilometre from Naryan-Mar, the administrative centre in Nenets Autonomous Area.
Presented in Barcelona
The Pechora LNG-plant project was presented at the 10th World LNG Summit in Barcelona, Spain today.
-The project shall allow to commercialize the reserves of natural gas in Nenetsk Autonomous District, that have not been developed due to lack of necessary infrastructure, so in case of realization of our project we can create a new region of gas production in Russia, said Viacheslav Pershukov, CEO of CH-Oil&Gaz LLC, in a press release send out by the company today.
CH Oil & Gaz is a subsidiary of Altech Group. Altech obtained the license to Kumzhinskoye in November 2007.
Third Russian Arctic LNG-plant
Pechora LNG-plant is the third LNG-plant on the drawing table in the Russian Arctic. From before, Gazprom together with Norwegian Statoil and French Total plans to build a huge LNG-plant in Teriberka on the coast of the Kola Peninsula to handle the gas from the huge Shtokman field in the Barents Sea. BarentsObserver has a special section where you can read more about the Shtokman development plans. There are also plans to build a LNG-plant for the gas on the Yamal Peninsula; also this topic has its own section in BarentsObserver.
The only operating LNG-plant in the Arctic is Statoil’s plant in Finnmark with gas from the Norwegian part of the Barents Sea.
The Kumzhinskoye field in Nenets was discovered in 1974.
Nuclear bomb
In November 1980, a gas leakage during the testing of appraisal well No. 9 at Kumshinskoye resulted in a blow out that lasted for years. During the period from 1981-1987, four wells were drilled in order to penetrate the damaged well and plug it, according to the energy monitoring information site IHS. The first three wells missed the target and a nuclear device was detonated in an attempt to stop the leak, but without success.
There are no reports about radiation contamination in the gas field after the explosion. The gas leak itself was first stopped in March 1987.
CH Oil&Gaz has published several images on their website from the area where the clean up from the old wells are shown, including radiation counters showing only background radiation from the soil.
