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    Gazprom Filling Chinese Pipe on Schedule

Summary

Russia is on track to deliver its first piped gas to China in two months.

by: Joseph Murphy

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Gazprom Filling Chinese Pipe on Schedule

Russia’s Gazprom is filling its 38bn m3/yr Power of Siberia pipeline with gas on schedule, in preparation for the launch of exports to China in December, the state-owned company said on October 11.

The pipeline is being filled with gas from the Chayandinskoye field in Yakutia in order to build up pressure. Gazprom said in a statement it had already drilled 176 production wells at the deposit, which will serve as the primary resource base underpinning Chinese sales.

Production drilling is also in “full swing” at the Kovyktinskoye field in Irkutsk, which will start feeding gas into Power of Siberia in early 2023. Kovyktinskoye’s launch has been timed to coincide with Chayandinskoye reaching its full production capacity of 25bn m3/yr. Kovyktinskoye will produce a similar amount of gas at its peak.

Gazprom also noted that it had almost finished assembling core equipment at the first two 7bn m3/yr production trains of the Amur gas processing plant (GPP), due to treat gas from Power of Siberia. Work on a third train is underway, it said.

Large-diameter pipes are also on route to another Gazprom pipeline project in the far east, the Sakhalin-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok (SKV) expansion, Gazprom said. The 5.5bn m3/yr pipeline, launched in 2011, has been underutilised because of weak demand for gas. But it is set to see greater use thanks to the launch of new gas-fired power generation in Vladivostok and Gazprom’s proposed 1.5mn mt/yr Vladivostok LNG bunkering facility in the early 2020s. Gazprom handed a $871mn contract to expand the pipeline in 2017 to privately owned RusGazDobycha – the same company that replaced Shell in the Baltic LNG project.