The commissioning ceremony for the first production train of the Amur Gas Processing Plant (GPP), one of the largest plants of its kind in the world, took place today via a video link. The implementation of such an ambitious project in the area of gas processing has no parallel in the history of Russia’s gas sector.
The Amur GPP is located near the town of Svobodny, Amur Region. With a design processing capacity of 42 billion cubic meters of gas per year, the GPP is going to become the main enterprise for advanced gas processing in Russia’s Far East. The plant receives multi-component gas via the Power of Siberia gas pipeline from the Chayandinskoye field (Yakutia); later on, it will also receive gas from the Kovyktinskoye field (Irkutsk Region).
Initially, the fundamental principle that underpinned the project was the necessity to process within the Russian Federation the multi-component gas fed from Power of Siberia.
The construction of the first production train of the Amur GPP was finished strictly on schedule. The commissioning of the next five trains is synchronized with increases in the volumes of gas transmitted via Power of Siberia. In 2025, the GPP will reach its full design capacity.
The products of the Amur GPP include sales gas (methane) and the components extracted from this gas, which are valued in the gas chemical and other industries. Operating at full capacity, the GPP will use cutting-edge equipment and state-of-the-art cryogenic technologies to produce 2.4 million tons of ethane, 1.5 million tons of liquefied petroleum gases (LPG), and 200,000 tons of pentane-hexane fraction. The primary consumer of the GPP’s ethane and LPG will be the Amur Gas Chemical Complex (a joint project of SIBUR and Sinopec).
One of the main products of the Amur GPP is helium, a particularly sought-after element for high-tech industries. With an annual output of 60 million cubic meters, the GPP is poised to become the global leader in helium production. The key link in the logistics chain of helium supplies to the international market will be the helium HUB near Vladivostok, which is going to be put in operation in the nearest future.
Gas processing with high value-added products is increasingly gaining importance in Gazprom’s development strategy. After the Amur GPP reaches its design capacity, the share of gas processing in the total volume of revenue will grow substantially along with the Company’s profits. This will help balance the influence of the price environment on Gazprom’s businesses and improve the economic efficiency of the Company’s expansive production complex in its entirety.
“The Amur GPP is one of the most cutting-edge and high-tech production enterprises in the world. Its construction schedule was extremely tight. Less than six years passed between the first pile and the start-up. An unprecedented amount of work was completed in that period. Today, the Amur Gas Processing Plant is onstream, and it has already become an integral part of Gazprom’s unified production system,” said Alexey Miller.