Russia’s Sakhalin LNG plant continues to produce at record rates

Sakhalin Energy, the operator of Russia’s first LNG export plant, says it is continuing to boost production at its liquefaction facility located in the country’s Far East.

The Prigorodnoye LNG facility operated by Gazprom in cooperation with Shell started producing the chilled fuel back in 2009 from two liquefaction trains with a total production capacity of 9.6 million tonnes of LNG per annum.

The plant produced 10.93 million tonnes of LNG last year, the highest yearly number since 2009, helped by several production capacity improvements. The majority of last year’s LNG cargoes went to Japan, South Korea and China.

“This year within eight months, we have produced more than 7 million tonnes of LNG which is 10% more than during the same period in 2016,” Ole Myklestad, Sakhalin Energy Production Director said in his speech during an event in Sakhalin on Thursday.

According to Myklestad, the production system optimisation and cryogenic heat exchanger modifications at the two liquefaction trains resulted in 12.5% increase of the installed production capacity.

He went on to say that one more modification project has been implemented this year at the LNG plant by adding wind screens around the air coolers of the two LNG trains.

“This helped reduce the impact of hot air circulation caused by crosswind on the cooling process. The preliminary forecast is that this will give an annual increase of 0.5% of LNG production with maximum effect in summer months,” Myklestad said.

In addition to the capacity improvements, Sakhalin Energy is also planning to add a third liquefaction train with the capacity of up to 5.4 million tonnes per year.

The design phase for the plant’s third train is nearing completion.

LNG World News Staff