Russia’s Sakhalin-2 LNG export terminal has many reasons to celebrate as it boosted yearly production volumes but also expanded to a new market.
Sakhalin Energy, the plant operator controlled by Gazprom, says the facility in the port of Prigorodnoye produced and shipped record 11.6 million tonnes of LNG last year. This is equivalent to 178.6 standard cargoes.
The plant’s feed gas mainly comes from the LUN-A platform in the Lunskoye field off the north coast of Sakhalin Island.
It started producing LNG back in 2009 with an design capacity of 9.6 mtpa, but due to technical improvements and upgrades, together with weather and temperature conditions, production rose by 20 percent.
Last year brought unprecedented conditions due to Covid-19 forcing also Sakhalin Energy to modify its regular yearly maintenance plans. The maintenance works which involved about 1500 people lasted just over a month. However, this did not affect the facility to hit record high volumes.
On top of that, Sakhalin LNG reached Singapore for the first time last year, the operator said. Since the launch in 2009, LNG produced at Sakhalin landed at 49 ports located in 8 countries.
According to Sakhalin Energy, in total the facility produced more than 125.8 million tonnes of LNG.
Country-wise, Japan is the biggest buyer of Sakhalin LNG, followed by South Korea, Taiwan, and China.
The shareholders of Sakhalin Energy include Gazprom (50 percent plus one share), Shell (27.5 percent minus one share), Mitsui and Co. (12.5 percent), and Mitsubishi Corporation (10 percent).
