Lukoil kicks off construction of Uzbekistan facility

Last year Lukoil signed a lump-sum deal worth $2.66bn with South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering for procurement and construction of the complex.

Russia’s largest privately-held energy company Lukoil said April 19 it has started construction of Kandym gas processing complex, a key facility for development of the Kandym group of gas-condensate fields which the company operates in the Bukhara province of southwest Uzbekistan.

The processing complex will include construction of a gas treatment plant, a natural gas gathering system with 114 producing wells, 11 well pads and four gathering stations, as well as 370 km of gas pipelines and 160 km of roads.

The facility will have the capacity to process 8.1bn m3/yr capacity of sour gas from the Kandym fields into treated natural gas, stabilised condensate, as well as solid and granulated sulphur. Start-up of the plant’s first phase is scheduled for December 2018.

“The Kandym gas processing complex will be one of the largest in Central Asia,” Uzbekistan prime minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev told guests at a ground-breaking ceremony who included contractors and local authority officials and contractors. Lukoil president Vagit Alekperov told the same event that the complex represents Lukoil’s largest investment project in Uzbekistan.

Last year Lukoil signed a lump-sum deal worth $2.66bn with South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering for procurement and construction of the complex.

Lukoil has been developing Kandym fields with Uzbekistan state-owned Uzbekneftegaz under a PSA signed in 2004. The Kandym group includes six gas condensate fields – Kandym, Kuvachi-Alat, Akkum, Parsankul, Khoji and West Khoji. Lukoil also has a license for the Southwest Gissar development in Uzbekistan.

According to the company it has invested more than $3.5bn in Uzbekistan and it is the country’s largest investor.

By 2016 Lukoil said it had produced more than 32bn m3 of gas in Uzbekistan.

In 2013 Hyundai secured a $3.2bn contract to build a gas-to-liquids (GTL) plant in the country for state Uzbekneftegaz that was due for completion in 2017. However last month South Africa’s Sasol, a co-venturer alongside Malaysia’s Petronas with Uzbekneftegaz in that venture, said it was reviewing its stake in the roughly 37,000 b/d GTL project.

Source: Natural gas europe