The first subsea production facility has been brought on stream offshore Russia, Gazprom announced.
The Kirinskoye gas and condensate field, part of the Sakhalin III project, is a 28km subsea tie-back to shore, in the Kirinsky block in the Sea of Okhotsk.
It is in 90m water depth and, once fully completed, will comprise seven wells connected to a single manifold, from which gas is then transported via pipeline to an onshore processing facility.
From there, the gas is transported via a 139km-long gas pipeline to the main compressor station of the Sakhalin—Khabarovsk—Vladivostok gas transmission system.
A semisubmersible drilling rig, the Polyarnaya Zvezda (Polar Star), owned by Gazprom and constructed at Vyborg Shipyard, is being used to drill the wells in the Kirinskoye field.
Gazprom says it is a sixth generation unit designed for operation in arctic conditions.
Once fully onsteam, production from Kirinskoye is estimated to reach 5.5Billion cu m a year. Reserves at Kirinskoye are estimated to be 162.5Billion cu m of gas and 19.1MM tons of gas condensate.
The Yuzhno-Kirinskoye and Mynginskoye gas and condensate fields, discovered by Gazprom, are also in the Kirinsky block and are also due to be subsea tie-backs to the same onshore processing facility.
Gazprom is currently carrying out exploration drilling at the Yuzhno-Kirinskoye field using its semisubmersible drilling rig Severnoye Siyaniye, a sister unit to Polyarnaya Zvezda.
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