Hydrogen: In Headspinning Shift, Russian LNG Major Novatek May Focus on Ammonia At New Gas Project, Break Contract With Siemens

If they had added "Pursue dream of performing with Bolshoi  Ballet" I wouldn't have been more surprised than I am right now.

Someone has been working their abacus to figure where the ROI is to be found.

From The Barents Observer, March 17:

In Russian Arctic energy shift, Novatek might turn from LNG to ammonia

The natural gas company intended to produce up to 5 million tons of LNG in its Ob project. It might instead go for ammonia. 

Novatek is in the process of pulling out of a major contract with Siemens and Russian compressor engineering company Kazancompressormash, newspaper Kommersant reports.

The company no longer wants to produce liquified natural gas in the Ob project. Originally, Novatek was to produce almost five million tons of LNG per year, but now the company might instead turn towards ammonia.

The contract with Siemens and Kazancompressormash was signed in summer 2020 and is worth €130 million. Novatek is now instead in dialogue with German company Linde, Kommersant writes.

The Ob LNG project was to be ready for production before 2025. It is the third major energy project developed by Novatek in the Yamal and Gydan area, and was originally to apply the Arctic Cascade technology, which is developed and patented by Novatek itself.

That same Arctic Cascade technology is applied in the fourth and final train of the nearby Yamal LNG project. However, the company has had major technical problems with the plant and its launch has been repeatedly postponed.

The problems at the Yamal LNG could be one of the reasons why Novatek now decides to shift to alternative production in the Ob project.

The decision is also likely to be linked with today’s rapid transition of international energy markets and the increasingly gloomy perspectives for fossil fuels. Ammonia is seen as a fuel for a cleaner future, and a number of leading industrial companies are in the process of developing new projects....

....MUCH MORE

Raising the question: Are we going to see other natural gas producers go all Haber-Bosch on us?  

"Turning air into bread" has links to many of our nitrogen posts including such hits as "The Adventures of a Nitrogen Atom", "How Making One Chemical Created the Modern World", and "Saudi Arabia Sends Blue Ammonia to Japan in World-First Shipment".

Here's another of Fritz Haber's projects:
Germany’s Post-World War I Scheme to Extract Gold from Water