Gazprom is welcoming Total back to the Shtokman project upon resuming operations in the Russian sector of the Barents Sea.
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Image of Gazprom, Total and StatoilHydro signing framework agreement for Phase 1, in 2007. From Gazprom. |
In a meeting between Gazprom’s Chairman of Management Committee Alexey Miller and Total CEO and President of the Executive Committee Patrick Pouyanne, the two discussed key issues of the current and future bilateral cooperation.
“Taking into account the successful cooperation with Total within the first phase of the Shtokman project, Total will be the first company invited by Gazprom to join us upon resuming this unique and technologically challenging project,” Miller said.
The Shtokman gas and condensate field is located approximately 600km northeast of Murmansk at 340m water depth.
According to Gazprom, Shtokman is among the largest fields in terms of explored natural gas reserves. Its C1 reserves are estimated at 3.9 Tcm of natural gas and 56 million tons of gas condensate. In Gazprom’s licensed area, there is about 3.9 Tcm of gas and 53.4 million tons of gas condensate.It will become a resource base for building up Russian pipeline gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies.
In July 2007, Gazprom and Total entered into a framework agreement for Phase 1 of the project. As did the Russian giant with Norwegian giant Statoil, three months later in an identical agreement.
According to Gazprom, in order to implement the project, Gazprom, Total and StatoilHydro signed a shareholder agreement to set up the special-purpose company Shtokman Development AG in February 2008. The agreement has Gazprom with 51% of the company, Total with 25%, and Statoil with 24%.
For Phase 1, Shtokman Development developed an integrated basic project involving the entire process chain from well drilling to final products delivery to the license owner for marketing. A comprehensive engineering survey has been performed, front-end engineering design (FEED) documents have been developed according to the international and Russian standards and a package of project specifications has been prepared. The project risks have been assessed and the ways of mitigating them have been elaborated. The state expert review for offshore facilities has been finalized, Gazprom said.
For Phase 2 and 3 of the project, Gazprom subsidiary Gazprom dobycha shelf developed key engineering solutions with a focus on process, environmental and fire safety of the future hydrocarbon production and transmission facilities.
The field is expected to reach its design capacity of 71.1 Bcm per year of gas through implementing Phase 3.
Field operations, according to Gazprom will be performed using deepwater production systems, and special floating production storage offloading (FPSO) and floating production unit (FPU) platforms equipped with quick-disconnect systems, to be able to quickly move off icebergs.
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