Russia's Sakhalin Energy resumes LNG production at Sakhalin-2 after turnaround

Russia's Sakhalin Energy said Aug. 18 it had resumed production of LNG from its Sakhalin-2 LNG project in Russia's Far East following a full maintenance shutdown that began in mid-July.

The first LNG cargo has been loaded onto the Amur River LNG carrier, which has now departed from the port of Prigorodnoye, Sakhalin Energy said in a statement.

"LNG train 1 has been restarted, while post-shutdown commissioning continues at train 2," it said.

On July 12, Sakhalin Energy said it had started a major planned overhaul of the facility, with all of its gas production assets to be shut down simultaneously.

The two-train Sakhalin LNG facility -- which was launched in 2009 -- produced and shipped a record volume of LNG in 2020, reaching 11.6 million mt.

It had an original design capacity of 9.6 million mt/year, but technical improvements and upgrades since then have seen actual output consistently exceed capacity.

The July-August turnaround took place at several assets, including the Lunskoye-A offshore gas production platform, the onshore processing facility, and the Prigorodnoye production complex.

"Some activities were completed for the first time, not only in the history of the Sakhalin-2 project, but also in Russia," Alexander Singurov, Deputy Production Director, said.

Future maintenance

Sakhalin Energy also opted to carry out some work during the summer turnaround that had been planned for later in 2021 and during 2022.

"Thanks to the extra maintenance performed this year, the company intends to skip a major turnaround next year," it said.

"This will allow Sakhalin Energy to reduce operating expenditure, do activity planning more efficiently and effectively, and transition the entire integrated gas chain to a four-year maintenance cycle going forward," it said.

With this approach, each train will be shut down once every two years, it said.

Shareholders in Sakhalin Energy are Gazprom (50% plus one share), Shell (27.5% minus one share), Japan's Mitsui (12.5%), and Mitsubishi Corporation (10%).

Gazprom and its partners have said previously they were planning a 5.4 million mt/year train 3 at the project, but the development has been on hold due to issues securing feedstock for the train.

It had been hoped to source gas for the third train from the ExxonMobil-led Sakhalin 1 project, through the development of new fields in Russia's Far East, or through a combination of the two.

However, Gazprom said in May that the "resource base matter is still pending."