Construction of an ice-resistant platform (ICP) for Gazprom’s Kamennomysskoye-Sea field on the Arctic shelf has begun.
Gazprom estimates the gas field, in the Ob Bay of the Kara Sea, holds some 555 billion cu m of gas reserves. Production operations are expected to begin in 2025, with a design output (for Cenomanian deposits) of 15 billion cu m/year.
The field lies in a marine environment characterized by low temperatures (up to minus 60 degrees Celsius), heavy storms, shallow depths (5–12 m), and thick and dense freshwater ice. Gazprom said development of the field would be the first shelf project in the world to be implemented in such extreme ice and climate conditions.
The platform will be more than 135 m long, 69 m wide, 41 m tall from the base to the helicopter pad and will weigh over 40,000 tons. The structures placed on the platform will include auxiliary drilling modules, operational and energy complexes, and living quarters. It will be used to build 33 main directional production wells. Another 22 wells for production maintenance are expected to be placed on satellite ice-resistant conductor platforms without permanent personnel at a later date.
Extracted gas will be fed into pipelines and arrive onshore into a comprehensive gas treatment unit and a booster compressor station to then route to Russia's Unified Gas Supply System.
The support structure will be V-shaped, and nearly all of the facility's equipment will be encased in the hull. The ICP 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 of the ICP will be filled with seawater and then fixed in place with 56 piles more than 2 m in diameter, driven 47 m into the seabed.
Separate components of the platform will be constructed in Astrakhan, Kaliningrad, Severodvinsk, Yekaterinburg, and Rybinsk and final assembly into one piece in Kaliningrad. A summer 2024 tow of the ICP to the field is planned.
Krasnoyarskgazprom Neftegazproject is the general designer and contractor for construction of the platform and Gazprom Dobycha Yamburg is operator and holder of the exploration and production license.