24 Mar 2020 17:03

Gazprom Neft to bring Novy Port Arctic project to peak production of 8 mln tonnes in 2020

MOSCOW. March 24 (Interfax) - Gazprom Neft is planning to produce 8 million tonnes of oil at the Novy Port Arctic project in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District in 2020, the company said in a statement.

As such, Novy Port will reach its "production plateau" of 8 million tonnes. Just several years ago, the plateau had been expected in 2022. As the project was developed and adjacent deposits were added to it, the shelf was shifted by two years to 2020.

In 2019 liquid hydrocarbon production in Novy Port rose 8% to 7.7 million tonnes.

Further development of the project is expected via formation of gas infrastructure. "Expansion of the gas treatment unit to a full gas processing plant with capacity of 15 bcm per year will make it possible to maintain the level of efficient use of associated petroleum gas (APG) at 95%. In 2019, the volume of gas use at the deposit grew more than 31% to 8.59 bcm," the statement said.

Investment in Novy Port has already totaled around 300 billion rubles, Vadim Yakovlev, Gazprom Neft Deputy CEO for Upstream, said previously. Through 2030, overall investment will come to around 600 billion rubles. "Now are already drawing investment fr om free cash flow. That is, overall, we are at the stage of recouping our investments," he said in April 2019.

"Gazprom Neft has the ability to boost liquid hydrocarbon production at Novy Port to 8.5 million tonnes and can also increase gas production to 20 bcm of gas. "The key facility for us is the future construction of a gas pipeline fr om Novy Port, which will connect Cape Kammeny with Yamburg and will allow us to deliver up to 20 bcm of gas into the Unified Gas Supply System," Yakovlev said.

Production at the Prirazlomnoye shelf deposit, another one of Gazprom's Arctic projects remained unchanged at 3.14 million tonnes of oil in 2019. This asset currently has 19 wells, with another 3 slated for launch in 2020.

Another Arctic project wh ere Gazprom Neft is operating on a parity basis with Rosneft is the Vostochno-Messoyakhskoye deposit, wh ere production grew more than 22% in 2019 to 5.6 million tonnes of oil equivalent. "In 2019, full-scale development of Achimov deposits began there, with reserves estimated at 35 million tonnes of oil and resources at 111 million tonnes. Deep wells drilled to these reservoirs have shown a flowrate of 5-8 times more than the average indictor across the deposit," Gazprom Neft said.

One of the prospective tasks for the development of the asset in 2020 is inclusion of thin seams and edge zones of the Vostochno-Messoyakhskoye deposit in development. Furthermore, plans for the development of the assets gas infrastructure call for the launch of a compressor station with capacity of 1.5 bcm of gas per year, a 47-kilometer gas pipeline and an underground storage facility for APG at the Zapadno-Messoyakhskoye deposit.

Gazprom Neft is boosting its share of production at Arctic projects: in 2018, the share of production at these projects was 27% of overall production by the company, while in 2019 that figure was up to 30%.