Plant amid Arctic ice. How liquefied natural gas is made in the North

MOSCOW, December 16. /TASS/. The Russian Arctic is known not only for frosts, polar bears and the northern lights. It keeps endless resources. In 2010, the government adopted a plan to develop production of liquefied natural gas on the Yamal Peninsula. Since then, the area has seen complexes to extract and liquefy gas. This is a story about getting the ‘blue fuel’ in the Russian North. A plant to build plants It is minus 20 degrees, the wind is 5mps, it’s late November, the Murmansk region, the road towards the Belokamenka settlement. Optimistic hoarfrost-covered banners along the road from the airport welcome guests - "North is cozy," "North is warm," and "North is beautiful." The first two signs may be considered doubtful, but the latter is absolutely true: everything is white, the winter began here quite long ago, and the surrounding scenes prompt this is where the New Year tale is. Unfortunately, we do not have much time to admire the view. At about 11, the daylight began, but the smartwatch on the wrist says: the beauty will not last for long - the sunset will start at 13:00. The polar night is coming. The road takes us to an area by the Kola Bay, hidden by high hills. It is Novatek’s center for the construction of large-scale offshore structures, the LNG construction center. Only five years ago nothing was on this shore. The first works in the area began in 2017. Inside a rock hill builders literally cut out a place for the new plant - to produce natural gas liquefaction trains on gravity-based structures (GBS). GBS is a pad, which remains on the sea bottom due to its weight and connections of the platform’s bottom with the soil. For transportation purposes, certain ballast keeps the platform on the water surface. Presently, the Center has been working on first two gas liquefaction trains on gravity-based structures for the Arctic LNG 2 project on the Gydan Peninsula. "The center’s purpose is to unite concrete platforms with technological modules. Their integration is the natural gas liquefying plant, which will be transported, since it can sail, by tows right to the field," said Roman Guryanov, Deputy Director of the Arctic LNG 2 project, Director on construction of the LNG plant. The location has been chosen not for the scenic views - only at that place specialists could find necessary depths, required to float in structures of the kind. Besides, here are the necessary infrastructures, the Murmansk sea port and airport, as well as an idle area of more than 600 hectares. Roman shows us to a dry dock, where one of the platforms is being made. It is a huge concrete base, on which would be installed modules with an endless number of pipes. The production term for one fully equipped platform is 18 months. The platform is 300 meters long and 150 meters wide. The weight is 600,000 tonnes. According to Novatek, those are the biggest floating structures in the world. In fact, it is a plant, which will be brought to the Gydan Peninsula to start immediately the gas liquefying process, without additional adjustments. "The platform is used to produce liquefied gas, store it and upload. This is why it is unique - all in one," Guryanov said. Who makes platforms In addition to the dry docks, the center has shops for assembling and painting, a berth, and concrete batch plants. The Center’s 20,000 personnel have a medical center and an accommodation camp, since most people work in shifts - they come from across Russia and from Turkey, Serbia, Italy, Azerbaijan and other countries. The language barrier could have hindered the process of talking to the media, but it is not a problem for the business processes. All signs are made at least in seven languages. One of them may be translated as "care for life" - it is a reminder the workers must use professional protection means. The Murmansk region’s residents also work at the Center. Evgeny Mikhailov is a specialist in integration of modules onto the platform. He is just back from Yamal. "Earlier, I’ve worked at Yamal LNG," he said. "This project is very ambitions, and I was anxious to get there, it’s very interesting. Here, I used to work times ago, when nothing was here, in Belokamenka, just the exploration - that was also interesting to me." Berth for platforms on Yamal It is minus 30 degrees, the wind is 6 mps, it’s late November, the Sabetta airport in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District. Gloomy, and the smartwatch has chosen not to quote sunrise or sunset in these latitudes, it simply reports - polar night. However, for a moment we manage to catch a glimpse of light. Around us, as far as the eye can see, is the endless ice desert. We take another flight to the Utrenniy airport, on the Gydan Peninsula. A couple more dozen kilometers by a shift bus - and here we are near the growing facilities of Arctic LNG 2. The first location is where gas is extracted from under the surface - the wells. Safety restrictions are most tough. An instructor tells reporters: "When you hear two short and one long beeps - a fire, four short - an accident." Smoking is out of question. "Here has been huge geology exploration, more than 50 exploration wells," Arctic LNG 2 Deputy Director General on drilling Vladislav Prosyanko said. "Then, they made geology and hydrodynamic models, and the result was - more than 150 deposits have been discovered here." Here is the Arctic drilling system, made at the Uralmash plant. In the darkness, at a distance, it resembles a Gothic cathedral. The drilling system’s name, the Arctic, speaks for itself - it can work in the complicated climate conditions. Next to the system spread reinforced pipes - those are ready wells. However, the main network of pipes is inside the ground. "The wells are up to 6,000 meters deep. All the wells have horizontal passages inside the productive layer, which is 1,500 meters, that is the layer, from which we will extract gas. Under this project, we plan to drill about one million meters." From inside the ground gas comes to another location - a complex processing system. "To here comes the layer mixture, which is processed to the target parameters. And further on along pipes it gets to the LNG plant. The condensate, separated from gas, just like gas, is transported to the LNG plant for further stabilizing," said Evgeny Krutko, head of the construction department. This is why the production will be waste-free and will not affect the ecology. The next location is on the shore. To here will sail the huge platform, which is being built near Murmansk. On it, the gas will be liquefied and stored until uploaded onto a tanker, which will take it to clients. The local climate, workers says, is difficult for people living here, but it is helpful for the production cycle - liquefying of natural gas requires very low temperatures, and here the nature does a part of this job. The fist consignments from here are due in 2023 already. First and second LNG About 80 kilometers from growing Arctic LNG 2, near Sabetta, is the first project - Yamal LNG, which supplies gas to the market. From the distance, it looks like an Olympic Village before Christmas - all the lights are on, and a huge torch is burning in the air. As we approach, we can see that those ‘buildings’ are an endless net of pipes, and the shining lights are necessary to keep work moving in the permanent darkness. Novatek’s employees say everything we can see today did not exist just a few years ago. When the project began, here, at Sabetta, there were only two dwelling houses, and the officially registered population was 19 people. Over the construction term, the population grew to 30,000. Now that the construction is over and the plant produces gas, the builders have gone, and the current personnel is about 5,000 people. The plant’s few neighbors are the indigenous Nenets, whose tents are just a few kilometers away from the plant. The industrial facility has a security division - in case the local fauna - Arctic foxes and polar bears - decide to pay a visit. The plant is fully autonomous - it has a power plant, accommodation houses, saunas, a medical center, and a club. Being a part of this very serious project, people could not do without a touch of humor - they have painted the huge tanks for the liquefied gas on the river shore in colors of well-known tins of milk, all Russians remember from the Soviet times. A "label" on one of the "tins" reads it contains the liquefied natural gas, frozen to minus 163 degrees, the quality complies with state regulations. Why LNG The core difference between two projects is how the plants are made. Yamal LNG is a stationary plant, built on the ground, and Arctic LNG 2 will be made on gravity based structures, using new advanced technologies. The global gas market is growing, and mostly due to LNG. Russia must take its share, which correlates with the country’s reserves, - about 20%. Another reason to build an LNG plant on GBS is to cut investments and thus to make the Russian Arctic LNG more competitive in the global market. The variant to transport LNG by tankers, without building a pipeline, means that gas can be delivered to any location worldwide. "Leading international analysts say, regardless of any scenarios to decarbonize the global economy and to use renewable energy sources, the LNG market will continue growing to 2050 both in absolute and relative terms," Novatek’s Commercial Director on gas and LNG international sales Yuri Yeroshin said. According to him, sales of pipeline gas grow by about 1% a year, while the LNG sales’ annual growth is 6-7%. LNG from the Gydan Peninsula deposit will be sold mostly on Asia-Pacific markets, he added. Read more