Gazprom Starts Producing LNG at Plant Near Nord Stream Pipeline

There is a small facility on the Baltic Coast near the start of the shutteredNord Stream line.

There are two production lines at Portovaya that produce 30,000 tons of fuel. One tanker is already moored near the facility while another is expected to arrive soon.

The Portovaya compressor station is the starting point of theNord Stream line that failed to come back from maintenance on Saturday, which caused Europe's energy crisis. The facility was in the spotlight after NASA satellites detected flaring on Russia's Baltic coast, raising concerns that the nation's gas giant was burning fuel instead of supplying it to Europe. Flaring is part of the process of opening a facility.

The facility completed 72 hours of testing on Monday.

The Portovaya site has an annual capacity of 1.5 million tons, which is less than half of the Sakhalin-2 site. Russia's Kaliningrad region is sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland and will be supplied by Portovaya.

James Herron helped with the project.