Exclusive interview: Russia’s Novatek aiming for top LNG exporters club

Russia’s largest independent natural gas producer, Novatek is working on expanding its liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity up to 60 million tonnes per year by 2030, according to the company’s finance chief.

“In the period from 2018 to 2030, our plan is to produce about 57-60 million tonnes of LNG per year,” Mark Gyetvay told LNG World News on Tuesday at the sidelines of the Flame conference in Amsterdam.

This capacity would place Novatek in a group of world’s largest LNG producers, as a single company.

This includes volumes from the Yamal LNG project in the Arctic that started exporting in December, the planned Arctic LNG 2 project and other projects, such as a small to mid-scale project in the region of St. Petersburg.

The St. Petersburg project includes two trains with the first train having a capacity of 660,000 tonnes per year.

According to Gyetvay, Novatek expects to launch this project by the end of this year or the beginning of next year. The company owns a 51 percent stake in the project.

The independent natural gas producer is also working on a couple of smaller projects within Russia such as a pilot program for converting trucks from diesel to LNG, and building LNG truck loading stations.

Note: This article is a part of the interview with Novatek’s Mark Gyetvay. LNG World News will release the full interview in the upcoming days.

By: Mirza Duran and Adnan Bajic