Amur Oblast, Russia, which is located one or two hundred kilometers north of Heihe City, Heilongjiang Province, China. It is located in the Far East of Russia, where resources are scarce and living and working conditions are difficult. Even so, the Amur natural gas chemical project is still in full swing in cold weather.

In 2019, China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation and Russia's Sibur Company signed a cooperation framework agreement on the Amur natural gas chemical project. The total investment of the project is 11.6 billion U.S. dollars, and the estimated annual output value is about 1.6 billion to 1.8 billion U.S. dollars after completion. In August 2020, the project started construction.

"The temperature in Amur in winter is very low, as low as minus 40 degrees, and the depth of soil freezing can reach 4 meters. This makes the laying of underground pipelines more complicated." Speaking of the difficulty of construction, Alek, general manager of the Russian project Xie Vereshakin said that very large equipment such as tower cranes must be transported by water, but the two previous floods have added a lot of trouble to the construction. Later, the project team developed a special plan to deliver 80 pieces of equipment to the site as planned.

In July 2021, Chen Jie came to Russia to participate in the on-site installation of the Amur Natural Gas Chemical Project. He told reporters that the scope of the project is very wide. In the early stage of the project, it is necessary to overcome disadvantages such as the shortage of construction personnel and the inadequacy of construction machinery and equipment.

The project is difficult, and the construction period pressure is not small. Russia Tobolsk has built similar projects with a designed annual production capacity of 2 million tons and a construction period of 52 months; but the Amur natural gas chemical project with a designed annual output of 2.7 million tons has a construction period of only 46 months.

Not afraid of challenges, deliver on schedule

Nevertheless, with the joint efforts of more than 1,000 construction workers from China and Russia, the project is progressing smoothly. Gao Yang, deputy general manager of the Amur Natural Gas Chemical Joint Venture, said that even in the face of various difficulties, as of the end of October 2021, the overall progress of the project has been 25.2% completed, and 30.9% is planned to be completed by the end of the year.

Project manager Li Shutong also said: "We have overcome the impact of unfavorable factors such as the difficulty of personnel relocation during the epidemic, language communication barriers with the owner's team, differences in owner's management philosophy and management culture, and the construction is progressing rapidly."

Wang Jun, the general representative of Sinopec Russia and Central Asia, told reporters that Russia is a key country for Sinopec to actively respond to the Belt and Road Initiative and its international layout. As a key project of Sino-Russian investment cooperation, the Amur natural gas chemical project "adheres to the principles of mutual benefit, win-win, and commercial viability, and gives full play to the advantages of integration of investment, technology, operation, trade, and engineering services. It will create a new situation in Sino-Russian energy cooperation and promote the two China’s economic and trade cooperation has been comprehensively improved and upgraded to make new and greater contributions."

In order to deal with the following cold weather, the project party has made sufficient preparations. Wang Liang, deputy project manager of the Engineering Project Department, said: “140 heaters are running at full capacity, and 15,000 square meters of thermal insulation materials have already been prepared in August 2021. The prefabrication of well rooms and pipe corridors has also been adopted to keep warm. Various measures such as shelters, electric heating and maintenance." Keywords: One Belt One Road, One Belt One Road News, One Belt One Road Project, Overseas Projects

“The project is completed before May 2024 as planned, and then the equipment can be debugged throughout the summer. By the end of 2024, we will be able to receive the first ton of products.” Vereshkin expects the project to give him a surprise.Editor/XuNing