Gazprom’s RusGazAlliance joint venture has started commercial gas production from the Semakovskoye field in West Siberia’s Yamal-Nenets coastal region in Russia.
According to the Russian gas giant, the field holds estimated recoverable reserves of about 320 billion cubic metres of gas and should reach a production plateau of 7.5 Bcm per annum during the first phase of the project.
Gazprom added that production will come from 19 extended reach wells drilled from the shore of the Kara Sea into the offshore segment of the field, then extending toward Taz Bay.
RusGazAlliance built a gas processing facility at the field to prepare output for shipping via a dedicated 122-kilometre connector to the Russian gas trunkline network operated by Gazprom.
Ice movement
The extended reach wells have made the development possible without the installation of a stationary production platform or artificial island in Taz Bay, which has strong ice movements during the winter season.
The wells at Semakovskoye target shallow Senoman formations at a distance of about four kilometres from shore.
Senoman formations, located at a depth of between 900 and 1500 metres, have been a traditional source of cheap gas for Gazprom in Yamal-Nenets since development of the structures started in the 1960s.
Drilling was reportedly carried out by Gazprom’s major contractor, Gazprom Bureniye.
RusGazAlliance was formed by Gazprom and privately held company RusGazDobycha in 2016, with the aim of developing the Semakovskoye, Parusovoye and North Parusovoye fields in Yamal-Nenets.
Kharasavey push
Despite the sharp downturn in gas exports and a higher tax take this year, Gazprom has continued to invest in Russia’s upstream sector, pouring billions of rubles into another major development, the Kharasavey gas field on the Yamal Peninsula in the Yamal-Nenets region, as well as the Baltic LNG project, its other undertaking with RusGazDobycha.
The Kharasavey field is planned to start production in 2023, delivering gas into the trunkline network via a 108-kilometre connector to the Bovanenkovo deposit, according to Gazprom.
Gazprom subsidiary Gazpromdobycha Nadym said recently that thousands of shift workers are involved in building a major gas processing and treatment facility foer the Kharasavey scheme.
Last year, Gazprom said the field could reach an annual plateau production of 32 Bcm, on recoverable reserves of about 2 trillion cubic metres.
However, the company has not provided any update to the mid-term outlook for Kharasavey following the loss of its European gas market as a result of explosions at the Nord Stream 1 and 2 subsea pipelines and the refusal to use the onshore Yamal Pipeline running across Belarus to Poland and Germany.
Together with output from the Bovanenkovo field, production from Kharasavey was initially intended to be sent to northwest Europe, where Gazprom was trying to gain a greater share of the market.
Gazprom said earlier in December that its overall gas production fell by more than 19% to below 377 Bcm between January and November this year, compared with the same period of 2021, after sharp declines in gas deliveries to Europe and domestic customers.
While the company said earlier that it hopes to send gas from the Yamal-Nenets deposits to China, a pipeline linking West Siberia with China is likely to become available only after 2030.
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