Russian energy company Rosneft and U.S. major ExxonMobil expect their future joint project to produce more than 6.2 million tons of liquefied natural gas per year, RNS quoted an ExxonMobil manager as saying on Thursday.
Exxon Mobil is pushing ahead with efforts to develop its $15 billion Far East Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project with Rosneft despite being forced to exit some joint ventures in Russia due to Western sanctions.
The plant’s capacity also could be increased from planned initial volumes, the report said citing James Grable, a manager at the Sakhalin-1 joint venture with Rosneft.
“For a capacity of 6.2 million tons per year, we need about 880 million cubic feet of gas per day,” he said, explaining that for this volume of production, the resources of the Sakhalin-1 project will be sufficient.
Earlier this year Exxon invited companies including China National Petroleum Corporation’s [CNPET.UL] engineering arm to bid for construction contracts by October, sources with knowledge of the matter said.
A final investment decision is due in 2019, they said.
Exxon and Rosneft have also held discussions about feeding gas from Sakhalin-1 fields into a planned third production unit at an existing LNG plant run by Gazprom and Shell on Sakhalin island.
The Sakhalin-1 project is implemented by a consortium in which Rosneft owns 20%, Exxon Mobil – 30%, Sodeco – 30%, and ONGC – 20%.
