12-03-2014

GEA Heat Exchangers to provide heat exchangers worth over €40M to Yamal LNG

GEA Batignolles Technologies Thermiques (GEA BTT), a subsidiary of GEA Heat Exchangers, landed a record order with a value of over 40 million Euros from the plant contracting companies Technip and JGC. The order was for more than 400 air-cooled heat exchangers for the three-line liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant under construction on the Siberian peninsula of Yamal. GEA BTT will design the heat exchangers, manufacture them over a period of three years, and deliver them to the customer. Technip and JGC are developing and building the first arctic LNG plant in Russia. Commissioning is planned for three phases and is scheduled to take place from 2016 to 2018.

The operating company Yamal LNG – in which Novatek holds 60 % interest, Total and CNPC 20 % each, – intends to build a plant based on the South Tambey field. The heat exchangers delivered by GEA will be installed in the three LNG lines, each of which will process 5.5 million metric tons of gas annually. The plant facilities will liquefy the extracted gas to reduce it to one six-hundredth of its original volume. This makes it possible to transport the gas economically by ship to markets of destination in Europe and Asia. A special LNG tanker with capacity of 170,000 m³ has been designed to enable LNG shipping the Arctic Ocean.

The plant contracting companies also face a special climatic challenge. The GEA heat exchangers are likewise required to withstand Siberian temperatures for decades, and are designed accordingly. In this project, GEA Batignolles Technologies Thermiques is profiting from experience gained from many other projects in the power-plant, oil, and gas sectors. Philippe Piron, CEO of GEA BTT and responsible for the Business Unit Air-Cooled Heat Exchangers (AFC-ST): “I am pleased that our competence in LNG production has received recognition in this manner, and that we have won the order for this outstanding project.” The fact that GEA had gained extensive experience in the design and construction of heat exchangers for highly critical and climatically exceptional conditions of use also spoke persuasively for awarding the contract to GEA.