Sakhalin LNG Plant to Close 1 Train this Summer

The Gazprom-led Sakhalin Energy consortium plans to take only one of its two LNG production trains in the Russian Far East offline for maintenance this summer, it said in its corporate magazine on April 30.

Previously the group said that both trains would be suspended for more than 30 days. The exact timing of the downtime has not been disclosed. The impact of low oil prices will take a few months to feed through into LNG long-term sales and purchase agreements, but the formula varies. 

Sakhalin Energy's Sakhalin-2 LNG export project has a design capacity of 9.6mn mt/yr, but output typically exceeds 11mn mt/yr. Gazprom has a 50% stake and one share in Sakhalin Energy, while Angl0-Dutch Shell has 27.5% minus one share and Japan's Mitsui and Mitsuibishi have interests of 12.5%and 10% respectively.