Since the launch of the fourth line in May, Yamal LNG has already produced more than 200,000 tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) on it, said Alexander Nazarov, head of Novatek's investor relations department.

“We launched LNG production at this line in May this year, now it is working. Actually, we have already produced more than 200 thousand on this line so far,” he said, speaking about the current results of the fourth line of Yamal LNG online -dialogue organized by BCS.

Nazarov recalled that this line was built using Novatek's own technology (Arctic Cascade) on the basis of Russian equipment.  Now research and commissioning works are ongoing on it, and it is necessary from a year to one and a half to fully understand all the details of its work, and it is still difficult to speak about the economic effect of launching in concrete figures, but initially its construction was cheaper in terms of costs per ton than for  the first three lines, said the top manager.

“It’s probably not always possible to compare directly, because the existing infrastructure of Yamal LNG is also used. Nevertheless, if this line operates at full capacity, it will be able to reduce the average cost of gas production at Yamal LNG by 3-4%. And when we pass all the tests, we can talk about a specific effect ", - he concluded.

Yamal LNG is a natural gas liquefaction project based on the South Tambeyskoye field.  The shareholders are Novatek (50.1%), Total (20%), CNPC (20%) and the Silk Road Fund (9.9%).  As part of the project, three technological lines with a capacity of 5.5 million tons each and one with a capacity of 0.9 million tons were launched.  Thus, the design capacity of the plant is 17.4 million tons, but the actual capacity is much higher: in 2020, only three lines of the plant produced 18.8 million tons of LNG.

In October, the head of Novatek, Leonid Mikhelson, said that the volume of LNG production on the fourth line this year will be about 20% of the line's design capacity, that is, about 180 thousand tons.

Source: Prime