By Agata Sheremet
MOSCOW, Feb 15 (PRIME) -- Construction and installation company Promstroi Group is banking on the drive of the world’s top associated gas burner, Russia, to fight pollution and is looking for foreign partners for assistance, COO Pyotr Lyamtsev said Friday.
Russia, which burns as much as 2.5 billion cubic feet of gas per day because it lacks the infrastructure to make use of it, ordered companies that do not utilize 95% of their associated gas pay 6 billion rubles in fines last year.
“Oil companies used to burn associated gas. But, of course, it does huge damage to the environment, especially the burning of gas with significant amounts of hydrogen sulfide… But in recent years, under the government’s utilization ruling, the authorities oblige oil companies to find ways to use associated gas, instead of burning it,” Lyamtsev told PRIME in an interview.
At the moment, Promstroi is completing the Pokrovskaya gas processing plant in the Orenburg Region in the Urals for oil firm TNK-BP. The launch of the plant, with a design capacity of 450 million cubic meters of associated gas annually, is scheduled for March 31.
The plant, on the construction of which Promstroi earned over U.S. $100 million, would process associated gas received from TNK-BP’s oil deposits into four kinds of products.
The first product would be gas, intended for gas export monopoly Gazprom’s pipeline system, also propane and butane for further industrial use, and gas condensate, used as a raw material for petrochemical and oil refining production, and solid sulfur.
Promstroi is inviting foreign firms to join it in earning money from Russia’s environmental program.
“In our opinion, no large engineering foreign firm can succeed in Russia without a Russian partner. They know how to manage engineering and procurement but they face problems dealing with the actual construction … One of our tasks is to help them minimize the risks associated with the specifics of the Russian contracting market,” Lyamtsev said.
“If we build up a good relationship with one company or another in Russia, we are ready to consider joint construction abroad. But so far, our route is the Russian market.”
Promstroi has already teamed up with Italy’s Tecnimont to bid for another of TNK-BP’s Orenburg Region-based projects, the Bobrovskaya gas processing plant with a design capacity of 315 million cubic meters of gas.
“We are open to cooperation and are searching for our market niche. We are participating in this tender together with the Italians. Tecnimont is a skilled professional in the field of gas processing, especially in sulfur,” Lyamtsev said.
Other bidders are Russia’s RusGazEngineering, Spain’s Tecnicas Reunidas and Turkey’s Gama Industry.
The four companies passed through technical prequalification in November. The next stage is price competition. TNK-BP has not yet announced the official decision, but the plant must be built and launched in June 2015.
Also, together with Tecnimont, Promstroi is holding talks with TNK-BP’s subsidiary Rospan on a contract to develop the Vostochno-Urengoiskoye gas condensate field.
“We believe that in the near future, the development of relationships between a client and a contractor, in the field of industrial construction, will gradually shift to the EPC (Engineering, Procurement, Construction) contracts,” Lyamtsev also said. As part of this strategy, last year the group established a subsidiary - Promstroi Engineering.
So far, Russian oil companies usually separate those who prepare engineering plans for a future plant, make procurements and manage construction.
“We are very interested in so-called EPC contracts. There are few EPC contracts in the Russian oil and gas sector, and TNK-BP is a pioneer in this field,” Lyamtsev said.
The Rospan project and the Bobrovskaya plant are EPC projects.
Promstroi Group is also seeking to expand its portfolio, as well as to continue cooperating with its core clients – Transneft oil pipeline monopoly, petrochemical firm Sibur, TNK-BP, and the Caspian Pipeline Consortium.
It is also in talks with Gazprom on a 600 billion ruble isomerization plant to produce Euro-4, Euro-5 standard gasoline from 2013, Lyamtsev said.
Promstroi is also building a metal framing plant in Belarus worth over. U.S. $10 million
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