“there is no way to pipe the volume of NG that went to Europe to China.”
We are talking about having to build new pipeline across time zones.
The only thing they had planned, was the 2,600 km Power of Siberia 2 pipeline - but that was not scheduled to complete until 2030 (the same year as the new Arctic 2 LNG terminal at Yamal). Since the war, the financing and partners pulled out of both projects.
They cannot pipe it to China, and they cannot load it on to ships for resale either. It is a total loss, that is going to have heavy secondary and tertiary effects, as gas towns become ghost towns, and jobs go away for good.
It is like decades of Rust Belt decay in American manufacturing towns, occurring all in one year.
“I’ve never seen an LNG plant flare so much,” said Dr Jessica McCarty, an expert on satellite data from Miami University in Ohio.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62652133
[As Europe’s energy costs skyrocket, Russia is burning off large amounts of natural gas, according to analysis shared with BBC News.
They say the plant, near the border with Finland, is burning an estimated $10m (£8.4m) worth of gas every day.
Experts say the gas would previously have been exported to Germany.
Germany’s ambassador to the UK told BBC News that Russia was burning the gas because “they couldn’t sell it elsewhere”.
Scientists are concerned about the large volumes of carbon dioxide and soot it is creating, which could exacerbate the melting of Arctic ice.
The analysis by Rystad Energy indicates that around 4.34 million cubic metres of gas are being burned by the flare every day.
It is coming from a new liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant at Portovaya, north-west of St Petersburg.
The first signs that something was awry came from Finnish citizens over the nearby border who spotted a large flame on the horizon earlier this summer.
Portovaya is located close to a compressor station at the start of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline which carries gas under the sea to Germany.
Supplies through the pipeline have been curtailed since mid-July, with the Russians blaming technical issues for the restriction. Germany says it was purely a political move following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
But since June, researchers have noted a significant increase in heat emanating from the facility - thought to be from gas flaring, the burning of natural gas.
While burning off gas is common at processing plants - normally done for technical or safety reasons - the scale of this burn has confounded experts.
“I’ve never seen an LNG plant flare so much,” said Dr Jessica McCarty, an expert on satellite data from Miami University in Ohio.
“Starting around June, we saw this huge peak, and it just didn’t go away. It’s stayed very anomalously high.”
Miguel Berger, the German ambassador to the UK, told BBC News that European efforts to reduce reliance on Russian gas were “having a strong effect on the Russian economy”.
“They don’t have other places where they can sell their gas, so they have to burn it,” he suggested.
Mark Davis is the CEO of Capterio, a company that is involved in finding solutions to gas flaring.
He says the flaring is not accidental and is more likely a deliberate decision made for operational reasons.
“Operators often are very hesitant to actually shut down facilities for fear that they may be technically difficult or costly to start up again, and it’s probably the case here,” he told BBC News.
Others believe that there could be technical challenges in dealing with the large volumes of gas that were being supplied to the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.
Russian energy company Gazprom may have intended to use that gas to make LNG at the new plant, but may have had problems handling it and the safest option is to flare it off.
It could also be the result of Europe’s trade embargo with Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine.
“This kind of long-term flaring may mean that they are missing some equipment,” said Esa Vakkilainen, an energy engineering professor from Finland’s LUT University.
“So, because of the trade embargo with Russia, they are not able to make the high-quality valves needed in oil and gas processing. So maybe there are some valves broken and they can’t get them replaced.”]