Pressure is building to relaunch a project to tap the huge Shtokman gas field in the Russian sector of the Barents Sea.

After a senior Total executive suggested at an international conference that Shtokman work should restart using new technology, members of the Murmansk Oblast—the region where Shtokman gas is likely to be landed onshore—have urged field operator Gazprom to reconsider its decision to stall the development.

Previously at the World Petroleum Congress (WPC) in June, Michael Borrell, Total’s senior vice president for E&P in Europe, called for Gazprom to restart Shtokman. “We offered new technologies. [We] hope for a soon (sic) resumption of Shtokman,” Borrell was quoted as saying at the WPC, according to a report by Russian news agency Itar-Tass.

Any new agreement on developing Shtokman should be based on liquefying 100% of the gas in the deepwater field, the Itar-Tass report suggested. In 2013 Total wrote-off US $350 million of expenditure on Shtokman.

More recently the acting governor of the Murmansk region, Marina Kovtun, met with Gazprom chairman Alexsey Miller during which she proposed a scheme for gasification of the Murmansk area, according to report by the Barents Observer website. According to that report Kovtun suggested a gas export pipeline connecting the Kola Peninsula to the North-West Russia gas system. Reference was made to large new industrial developments in the Murmansk region which would drive gas demand there.

After the meeting with Miller, Kovtun noted Gazprom’s interest in resourcing the Murmansk region either by LNG or pipeline gas. “Today the question is how the gas will be in the Murmansk region: in the form of liquefied natural gas or pipeline,” Kovtun was quoted as saying.

Estimates of the recoverable reserves in Shtokman indicate the field, which lies in a water depth of up to 340 m (1,115 ft), contains up to 3.9 Trillion cubic metres (137 Tcf) of gas and up to 56 MMtonnes of condensate.

Previously development of the field has been suggested with a 600 km (370 mile), 44-inch offshore pipeline and an LNG plant at Teriberka, 100 km (62 miles) west of Murmansk. Concepts studied included subsea-to-shore and floating production options. Disagreement between operator Gazprom and its development partners at the time, Statoil and Total, led to the project being abandoned in 2012.

Discovered in 1988, Shtokman has had a number of European contractors work on its potential development. They include Technip, which performed a FEED for an onshore transport system and LNG complex; Doris Engineering which worked on designs for a subsea production system; JP Kenny on the design of a subsea pipeline—along with Rubin Design Bureau and a Gazprom subsidiary, Giprospetsgaz; while WorleyParsons, along with subsidiary IntecSea, performed a FEED for a surface production facility.

Offshore