Over 300 people, including about 160 maintenance contractor personnel, will be involved in this effort. In addition to multiphase separation equipment clean-up and purging, they will carry out regular turbine inspections, upgrade the platform’s control and safety systems, replace some pipe sections and other equipment. In addition, a tube bundle in one of the platform’s heat exchangers will be replaced with a special-order titanium version. The replacement bundle will soon be delivered to Sakhalin Island and then shipped to the platform.
Roman Dashkov, Sakhalin Energy’s Chief Executive Officer, pointed out that this shutdown is an integral part of company operations. “We have already successfully completed the Integrated Gas System turnaround campaign and are now commencing maintenance operations at our oil production platforms. Our delivery schedules have been agreed with the customers to fully reflect these activities. Despite pandemic-related challenges, all of them are proceeding per schedule”, added Mr Dashkov.
Before starting the turnaround, a lot of effort was made to ensure proper personnel mobilisation while facing the pandemic. All personnel had to self-quarantine for 14 days at corporate Temporary Accommodation Facilities prior to arriving at the platform.
These maintenance and inspection activities will take a month to complete. After that, the platform will be fully restarted. In the meanwhile, the company will continue delivering its plans by producing and shipping crude oil and LNG to buyers in the Asia-Pacific. About 3.5 standard oil cargoes, or approximately 2.4 MMbbls, will be produced over this period.
It should be noted that the Molikpaq is the first offshore platform installed in Russian waters as part of the Sakhalin-2 project. In April 2020, it reached a 300 MMbbls milestone since the start of production in 1999. Even after 20 years of operation, the platform continues to make a significant contribution to Sakhalin Energy’s hydrocarbon production.