Sakhalin Energy has offloaded the 200th oil cargo from its production complex Prigorodnoye. The oil will go to Petro Diamond, subsidiary of Mitsubishi Corporation. Noteworthy is the fact that both the first and the 200th cargoes were shipped from the complex by Governor Farkhutdinov tanker.

Sakhalin Energy has been producing oil since 1999. Initially it was seasonal oil production and export during ice-free period from the Vityaz production complex comprising Molikpaq, Russia’s first offshore oil platform (PA-A), single anchor leg mooring, and floating storage tanker Okha. Year-round production began as soon as offshore and onshore assets were put on stream on the 12 December 2008, followed by exports from the purpose-built Prigorodnoye terminal. The same month saw the start of oil production from Piltun-Astokhskoye-B (PA-B), the Project’s second oil platform. As soon as gas production started from Lunskoye-A (LUN-A) platform, and the Russia’s first LNG plant was put into operation in February 2009, oil export started to grow owing to gas condensate.

The new oil blend got the name of Vityaz, a brand well acknowledged over the recent decade. This crude is low-sulphur, with high content of light and medium light hydrocarbon fractions used for production of petroleum, kerosene, diesel fuel and crude petrochemical materials. It is purchased by the energy and oil refining companies of Japan, Korea, China, USA, Philippines, Thailand and New Zealand.

The crude oil is transported by tankers Governor Farkhutdinov, Sakhalin Island, and Zaliv Aniva chartered by Sakhalin Energy long-term to ensure oil exports from Prigorodnoye terminal. These are 1C ice class tankers fitted with bow loading gears, which, in combination with double hulls allows year-round transportation of the Sakhalin oil.

Prigorodnoye sea port is capable of receiving about 160 LNG carriers and 100 Aframax oil tankers per year in average, i.e. one vessel daily. Since the operation phase began, the port infrastructure allows to perform offloading works on tanker within 16 hours, the whole vessel port servicing cycle taking 24 hours at that. Since December 2008, Sakhalin Energy has exported 18.5 million tons of crude oil.

28 February 2012.