Russian state-owned Gazprom has confirmed plans to launch long-delayed Urengoy condensate treatment facilities, which should allow for gas and condensate production to be restored after last week's accident at the Urengoy condensate processing plant.
The firm plans to launch the new unit at Urengoy this year to stabilise condensate from the Urengoy Achim formations in Nadym-Pur-Taz, and an accompanying condensate pipeline and related pumping station. It said in June that it had completed construction of and was finalising start-up works for the additional unit, which would add about a third of existing processing capacity.
"We will commission these facilities later this year for sure," Gazprom said without giving the precise date. The facilities are "at the advanced stage", it said.
The firm declined to say whether the new units could restore gas and condensate output following the 5 August fire at its Novy Urengoy condensate treatment plant. Gas output has likely been affected by the accident as condensate and gas are produced jointly from the same wells in the Achim and Valanzhin layers of the Urengoy production complex.
Russian gas deliveries to Germany through the 33bn m³/yr Yamal-Europe pipeline have been weaker since last week's accident. German receipts at Mallnow rose briefly in the first three hours of today's gas day, when they were 434 GWh/d, before falling to 363 GWh/d in the following nine hours, close to yesterday's 367GWh. Mallnow has a technical capacity of 932 GWh/d, with nominations hovering around that level in recent months before slumping in late July.
Complex geology
Complex production processes at Urengoy — Russia's largest production site with over 2,800 wells — makes it difficult to assess the effect of last week's accident on Gazprom's overall gas production.
The damaged plant treated condensate from the as-yet largely untapped Achim 1, Achim 2, Achim 4 and Achim 5 formations. Wells from the shallower Valanzhin layers also contain a significant amount of ethane, propane and condensate.
But Urengoy's shallower and easier-to-recover Cenomanian layers mainly consist of methane, so probably do not need to be passed through the damaged treatment plant. These layers are 75pc depleted, the Russian energy ministry said earlier this year, against 51pc at Valanzhin.
The Achim 1 project — owned by Gazprom and German upstream firm Wintershall Dea through 50:50 joint venture Achimgaz — was expected to reach its 9.6bn m³/yr plateau gas output last year. Achim 2, developed solely by Gazprom, produced 3.8bn m³ of gas in 2020 and was expected to increase output this year. Achim 4 and Achim 5, developed by Achimgaz, are at the pilot production phase.
Urengoy's total gas production was 99.8bn m³ in 2019, before a Covid-19-induced drop in gas demand and output in 2020.
