Novatek’s medium-scale plant in Russia’s Baltic Sea port of Vysotsk continues to produce LNG above its nameplate capacity.
The Vysotsk facility has a capacity of 660 thousand tons of LNG per year. Its infrastructure includes a 42,000 cbm LNG storage tank but also an offloading berth designed to handle carriers with a capacity of up to 30,000 cbm.
“The project operated above the nameplate capacity and produced 168 thousand tons, or 19 percent more than in the same period last year,” Lev Feodosyev, first deputy chairman of Novatek’s management board, said on Thursday during a conference call discussing the company’s quarterly results.
In the January-September period, the LNG plant produced 516 thousand tons, a rise of 37 percent year-on-year, corresponding to the capacity utilization level of 105 percent, according to Feodosyev.
Novatek said in January this year the plant had produced 1 million tons since its launch in April 2019.
Cryogas-Vysotsk had dispatched more than 200 LNG carriers and 1,200 trucks to a diverse geography including Finland, Sweden, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Estonia, Poland and Spain, Novatek said then.
In addition, the project supplied more than 80 trucks to the Russian domestic market as part of Novatek’s commercial activities to provide LNG for its customers in the Murmansk region and the company’s network of fueling stations.
Feodosyev said during the call that Novatek’s “domestic LNG fueling retail network consists of 12 stations, and this week we are launching the 13th one.”
Novatek also operates a network of LNG filling stations in Germany and Poland.
“We plan to build up to 30 retail LNG fueling stations in Europe. The total sales thorough
our LNG fueling network reached about 3 thousand tons per month, and since the
beginning of the year we have sold more than 21 thousand tons through our European retail
stations,” Feodosyev said.