Yamal Liquefaction Plant. A story of success
The project itself, YAMAL LNG, is an integrated project encompassing natural gas production, liquefaction and shipping. The project was approved in 2010 and the third processing train started operating in November 2018, one year ahead of schedule and well within the budget. What is the story behind this incredibly challenging, yet successful, project?
The Yamal peninsula is currently estimated to hold the largest gas reserves in the world. Yamal LNG is using the South Tambey (Tambeyskoye) gas field, located near Sabetta in the Yamal peninsula in Russia. The field’s estimated reserves are near 44 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas and 550 million barrels of condensate, with proven reserves standing at 1.26tcf of gas and 51.6mb of condensate.
The Yamal peninsula is a region above the polar circle, in the estuary of the Ob River; a wild, remote region that features some of the toughest working conditions. The soil is frozen for seven-to-nine months a year, while the permafrost below hardly thaws. Additionally, the region is extremely remote and desolate, with no local workforce, and the plant being more than 3,000km from the nearest potential market. All of the aforementioned, combined with hostile temperatures that can go as low as -50°C make drilling operations and setting up the facilities a serious engineering challenge. As a result, the construction of the LNG plants and facilities was conducted in a modular fashion, which a Chinese consortium was tasked with. The whole infrastructure was built on tens of thousands of stilts of different shapes and sizes, a solution never implemented on such a large scale before, and then transported to its intended location. The plant’s liquefaction technology was also carefully chosen to ensure it could operate safely in the region’s harsh conditions.
The LNG processing plant has a planned capacity of 17.4 million metric tonnes a year of gas (16.5Mmtpa of which are operational at the moment of writing this article, with the first three trains having a capacity of 5.5Mmtpa, and the fourth a planned capacity of 0.9Mmtpa, scheduled for 2020) and one million metric tonnes of condensate. It is planned to hold four processing trains, of which three are already built and operating at full capacity, alongside storage and loading facilities. The project also includes a sea port and airport in Sabetta, a fleet of ice-class LNG tankers to transport the LNG (of which 10 have already been commissioned at the time of writing, with the rest arriving during 2019) are also scheduled for inclusion under the project.
Once completed, the project is expected to cost around US$27 billion. The funds came mainly from Russia (the project was declared to be of national interest), China and, to a lesser degree, from Europe. The company leading the joint venture is Novatek, executing the project through its subsidiary Yamal LNG, which holds 50.1% interest in the project. Out of the remaining participants, Total holds another 20% together with CNPC (20%) and Silk Road Fund (9.9%).
While not 100% completed yet, the project is already a huge success, a world-first and an incredible engineering and logistical feat from which to derive lessons for future LNG projects carried out in similar conditions.
