Beginning with early 2019, Pancevo will no longer only process crude oil, but also produce electricity and heating energy. Gazprom Energy Holding, a subsidiary of Gazprom, will start building a power plant/heating plant in this Serbian town, which will produce all energy from gas.
The plan is for the works to be completed in the third quarter of 2020, and the plant will span 2 hectares of land.
This is a joint project of Gazprom Energy Holding and Naftna Industrija Srbije (NIS – Petroleum Industry of Serbia), where the Russian partner will have a 51% stake in the plant and the Serbian partner 49%. A branch company called Srpska Generacija – Novi Sad – TE-TO Pancevo was founded for the purpose of project management.
The agreement on this large-scale energy project, which confirms that oil companies are increasingly turning to power production, primarily from ecologically clean gas, was signed in June 2015 at the Sankt Petersburg Economic Forum. The aim is for the produced electrical and heating energy to be used by the Pancevo Refinery, but also to have all surplus electricity sold in the local and foreign markets.
Since the power market in Serbia is open and each consumer can choose who to buy power from, once the construction is over, businesses and households will be able to pick NIS, that is, Gazprom Energy Holding, as the supplier.
This turnkey project was awarded to Shanghai Electric Group at a tender last October. The installed capacity of the steam-gas generator will be 200 MW, and it will consist of two steam turbines, two boilers for the production of heating energy and one steam turbine. These generators have considerable economic and environmental advantages compared to the traditional production from coal.
Mikhail Odrziwoyski, the director of the Directorate for Capital Construction of the Prvomajsk Thermal Power Plant in the Southwestern part of St. Petersburg, says that the plant in Pancevo is modelled after the Prvomajsk plant.
“This Russian thermal power plant has been producing electricity and heat from the gas for the last 11 years. In the past, it was a coal-operated plant, but after the modernization, the capacity was increased from 300 to 360 megawatts. Today, the plant adheres to all environmental quality standards. The obsolete equipment has been replaced and the reliability of electricity and heat supply has increased automatically. Most importantly, the environmental pollution in St. Petersburg, as well as the air and water basins of the Gulf of Finland, has been reduced”, Mr Odrziwoyski adds.
Only one block of this thermal power plant consumes 47,000 cubic meters of gas per hour and provides heat for more than 500,000 households in St. Petersburg. Gazprom Group has launched large investments in the energy sector, that is, in the production of electricity and heat from the gas in 2007. This largest power company in Russia has 80 power plants with the total installed electrical capacity that is tantamount to the capacity of about one-sixth of the entire Russian energy industry.
(Politika, 05.11.2018)
http://www.politika.rs/scc/clanak/414843/Struja-iz-gasa-uskoro-u-Srbiji
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