East Siberian producer eyes ammonia opportunities
East Siberian oil producer Irkutsk Oil (INK) said on July 9 it had reached an agreement with Japanese firms JOGMEC and Toyo Engineering to move on to the second stage of their study into blue ammonia production from natural gas. They carried out first-stage studies last year.
INK is more an oil than a gas producer, even though many of its fields in Irkutsk, Yakutia and Krasnoyarsk contain large quantities of gas. It has struggled to commercialise these resources, because of limited local infrastructure and demand, and the lack of export access. The Power of Siberia pipeline flows eastern Siberian gas to China, but only state-owned Gazprom is allowed to use it.
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Ammonia can be produced from gas by using steam methane reformation to separate the hydrogen which is then combined with nitrogen. It is classified as blue when the CO2 is captured and stored. INK said the waste gas could be reinjected into its oilfields to boost recovery.
INK also said on July 12 it had won the Tubinsky oil and gas block in the Irkutsk region in an auction. It paid 30.6mn rubles ($410,000) for the licence, versus a starting price for bids of 27.8mn. The 5,000-km² block holds 2mn metric tons of oil, 3mn mt of condensate and 87bn m3 of gas in D1+D2 Russian classification reserves.