Finnish state-owned energy firm Fortum is to supply renewable power to Novatek’s medium-scale LNG plant in Russia’s Baltic Sea port of Vysotsk as part of a power purchase agreement revealed on Wednesday.
The deal builds on the memorandum of understanding Novatek and Fortum signed in June last year.
Under the power purchase deal, the electricity requirements of Novatek’s Cryogas-Vysotsk
LNG plant would be fully covered with energy produced at Russian wind farms of Fortum and its joint ventures, Novatek said in a statement.
Purchasing the “green electricity” would allow Novatek to reduce Scope 2 carbon
footprint of the LNG produced by the Vysotsk plant, it said.
“Using green energy to power natural gas liquefaction is an effective way to reduce the LNG’s carbon footprint,” Novatek’s chief executive and Russian billionaire, Leonid Mikhelson, said.
“This is an emerging area of activity for us and we are considering various ways of using wind power in our LNG projects. Buying third-party renewable energy is an economically efficient solution that helps reduce carbon emissions in the region as a whole and contribute to further development of wind farms in Russia,” Mikhelson said.
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.
Moreover, the plant mainly sends LNG to the countries of the Baltic Sea Region, including Finland, Sweden, Lithuania and Estonia.
Novatek operates the facility with a 51 percent share while Gazprombank holds the rest.