Construction of Gazprom's ice-resistant offshore production platform for the development of the Kamennomysskoye-Sea field began Thursday at the shipyard of Southern Shipbuilding and Repair Center (part of United Shipbuilding Corporation) in the Astrakhan Region.
The Kamennomysskoye-Sea gas field is located in the Ob Bay of the Kara Sea where temperatures can drop to minus 60 degrees Celsius.
"The field is unique in terms of its gas reserves, which amount to some 555 billion cubic meters. Production operations are due to commence in 2025, with a design output (for Cenomanian deposits) of 15 billion cubic meters per year," Gazprom said.
The field is situated in a marine environment characterized by low temperatures, heavy storms, shallow depths (5–12 meters), and thick and dense freshwater ice, Gazprom said.
"The development of this field will become the first shelf project in the world to be implemented in such extreme ice and climate conditions," Gazprom said.
Gazprom is now building a special ice-resistant platform for the development of the field. The platform will be more than 135 meters long, 69 meters wide, 41 meters tall from the base to the helicopter pad, and its weight will exceed 40,000 tons in total.
The structures placed on the platform will include, inter alia, main and auxiliary drilling modules, operational and energy complexes, and living quarters for 120 people.
The ice-resistant platform will be used to build 33 main directional production wells (later on, another 22 wells for maintaining production rates will be placed on satellite ice-resistant conductor platforms that do not require the permanent presence of personnel). The extracted gas will be fed into pipelines and arrive onshore into a comprehensive gas treatment unit and a booster compressor station. After that, the gas will go into Russia's Unified Gas Supply System.
The platform will be firmly fixed on the muddy bottom of Ob Bay with the help of a piled gravity base foundation: the platform will be placed on the seabed, the underwater part will be filled with seawater and then fixed in place with 56 piles more than 2 meters in diameter, driven 47 meters into the seabed.
Separate components of the platform will be simultaneously put together in Astrakhan, Kaliningrad, Severodvinsk, Yekaterinburg, and Rybinsk. The platform will be finally assembled in one piece in Kaliningrad.
"In the summer navigation period of 2024, it is planned to tow the [ice-resistant platform ] to the field, after which flare booms and a helicopter pad will be set up at the facility. Construction operations will involve about 7,000 Russian workers and specialists."