First pipe welded on Kovykta-Sayansk-Irkutsk gas pipeline
Fri, 7 July 2006
THE FIRST pipe joints of the 645-km long, 24- and 28-in diameter Kovykta-Sayansk-Irkutsk main gas pipeline were welded last month, according to pipeline construction contractor Stroineftegaz JSC. It had been planned to carry out the first welding of the pipes in the Chikan settlement of the Zhigalovsky district a week earlier but, due to spring floods and relative impassability of roads, the necessary equipment could not get to the site.
The pipe for the East Siberia Gas Co line are being supplied by the Vyksunsk Metallurgical Works in the Nizhny Novgorod, and transported to site on the Baikal-Amur Railway (BAM). The first 112-km section of the pipeline is to be built before the end of this year, and it is planned that the line will be operational in from 2008, transporting gas to the main industrial centres of the Lake Baikal area.
The pipeline is a part of a regional project to develop of Eastern Siberia's Kovykta gas condensate deposit. The plant for gas recovery, comprising a number of horizontal production wells and infrastructure facilities, has already been brought into production, and the gas-separation complex is being built in Sayansk. The complex will separate ethane, butane, propane, and helium as independent products.
The Kovykta deposit, initially exploited in the middle of the 1980s, has proven reserves of gas equal to almost 2 trillion cum. The shareholders holding the development license are TNK-BP (62.42%), Interros (25.82%), and the Irkutsk region administration (11.24%).