New pipelines to price Kashagan oil undertaking up to $three.six bln
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By Raushan Nurshayeva
ASTANA, Oct ten (Reuters) – Kashagan, the world’s most highly-priced oil job, will have to spend yet another up to $3.six billion to exchange leaking oil and fuel pipelines, which also could hold off the restart of output, the Kazakh strength ministry reported.
Production at the Kashagan reservoir, the world’s most important oil obtain in current occasions, started off in September past calendar year but was halted just a couple weeks later just after the discovery of fuel leaks in the $50 billion project’s pipeline network.
Changing the pipelines at the oilfield, which lies in the Caspian Sea off western Kazakhstan, will price involving $1.6 billion and $3.six billion, the Kazakh Vitality Ministry mentioned in a document acquired by Reuters on Friday.
The multinational consortium creating Kashagan has determined pressure cracking because of to sulphur-laden gases as “the root bring about of the pipeline issues” at the oilfield.
The last cost of the substitute will rely generally on the resistance to corrosion of the pipes employed in laying the new pipelines, the energy ministry mentioned in the doc despatched to the Kazakh parliament.
The field’s oil is four,two hundred metres (four,590 yards) down below the seabed at very high tension, and affiliated gas achieving the floor is mixed with some of the optimum concentrations of harmful, metal-having hydrogen sulphide (h2s formula) at any time encountered.
“Having into account the large risks of repeated leaks by picking out pipe content of specification L360 (X52) as envisaged by the fundamental scenario, there is high chance the contractor will opt for an option situation of applying pipes covered with non-corrosive alloys,” it stated.
The a lot more expensive choice is to use carbon-steel pipes of strength L415 (X60) with an inside coating manufactured of non-corrosive alloys, it explained.
Contacted by Reuters, the consortium declined to comment.
The Kashagan consortium will have to invest in pipes adding up to a full length of 200 km (a hundred twenty five miles) to replace the entire network of the field’s oil and gasoline pipelines, the ministry extra.
A present hold off in testing metal and welding is possible to frustrate the consortium’s options to restart output at the area in the 2nd 50 percent of 2016, it stated.
Senior Kazakh govt officials have mentioned that output from Kashagan might be restored in the very first or second fifty percent of 2016.
The consortium is in talks with Italian oil company team Saipem with regards to the alternative of oil and fuel pipelines at the oilfield, the ministry said.
Saipem had initially been contracted to lay the existing pipeline community at Kashagan, working with pipes equipped by Japanese providers Sumitomo and JFE.
The Kazakh energy ministry did not identify who would supply the pipes for the new pipelines.
The Kashagan consortium contains Eni, Exxon Mobil , Royal Dutch Shell, Complete, China’s CNPC, Japan’s Inpex and Kazakh point out-operate enterprise KazMunaiGas.nn(Reporting by Raushan Nurshayeva Creating by Dmitry Solovyov modifying by Jason Neely and Jane Baird)