[Arnaud Le Foll, General Director – Total E&P Russia ]

Arctic LNG 2 is a major Liquefied Natural Gas project of 19.8 million tonnes that we will be developing in the Russian Arctic with our partner Novatek. It's the follow-on from our successful Yamal LNG project

Many didn't believe it possible but we proved, with our partners Novatek and PetroChina, that it was possible to undertake mega-investment projects in the Russian Arctic on time and on budget.

The challenge is then to transport the LNG from these remote areas in the Russian Arctic to our customers either in the Atlantic basin or in Asia.

By carrying out the development of Yamal LNG, and thanks to a fleet of ice-breaking LNG carriers, which we designed, we proved it was possible to use the Northern Sea Route to deliver, especially in summer, our cargos of LNG to Asia as fast as possible, halving the delivery time compared to the traditional Suez route.

What we are aiming for is a 30% cost reduction on the Arctic LNG 2 project compared to Yamal LNG. To do this, we have changed our technical concept regarding liquefaction.

We will be building the plant in Murmansk.

It will consist of 3 LNG trains. Each train will be placed on a concrete barge. These concrete barges will then be towed from Murmansk to the mouth of the Ob and moored on the riverbed opposite the gas field. Once in place it will be connected to the gas gathering pipeline networks.

This concept, that we'll be implementing on Arctic LNG 2, could be duplicated on other gas fields on the Yamal and Gydan peninsulas.

We could then leverage economies of scale and a positive learning curve and we intend, as agreed with Novatek to acquire a 10-to-15% stake in all future LNG developments in the Russian Arctic.