Gazprom puts off commissioning of Baltic LNG facility by year to 2023

MOSCOW, Mar 10 (PRIME) -- Russian gas giant Gazprom has postponed commissioning of the Baltic LNG liquefied natural gas (LNG) producing facility to 2022-2023 and may postpone the date further, it said in promo materials for its new bond issue on Friday.

“We expect the Baltic LNG to be launched in 2022-2023 and may revise the inauguration date after the project documentation is prepared,” Gazprom said, adding that it has finished pre-front end engineering design for the project to construct a facility with a capacity of 10 million tonnes of LNG annually and an option to expand the capacity to 15 million tonnes of LNG in the port of Ust-Luga in the Leningrad region.

The plant intended to make LNG for the markets of the Atlantic region, the Baltic and the North seas, as well as the Middle East and the South Asia. The project will be financed using a project financing scheme.

According to the materials, Gazprom also plans to construct 663 kilometers of the Sila Sibiri (Power of Siberia) natural gas pipeline in 2017.

“We have completed construction of about 445 kilometers of the pipeline in 2015-2016 and expect to build an additional 663 kilometers in 2017,” the company said.

In 2019-2020, Gazprom intends to launch the fourth and the fifth fields of the Achimov deposits of the Urengoi oil and gas condensate field in Eastern Siberia, a year later than previously announced.

“We expect the fourth and the fifth fields… to start operating in 2019-2020, together with the first and the second fields, to reach the cumulative capacity of 31.8 billion cubic meters of gas and 10.6 million tonnes of gas condensate in 2026-2030”, the materials read.

The company also affirmed output plans for the fourth and the fifth fields at 13.9 billion cubic meters of gas and 3.8 million tonnes of gas condensate.

(58.8318 rubles – U.S. $1)

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