Russia’s first ice-class LNG tanker built at a domestic shipyard has started trials at sea, according to vessel-tracking data from LSEG cited by Reuters.
Russia, which has seen sanctions pile up on its LNG projects and the ships it uses to carry the liquefied natural gas, looks to boost its LNG exports despite the U.S. and other Western sanctions.
The new ice-class tanker, Alexey Kosygin, has been built at the Zvezda shipyard, Russia’s flagship shipbuilding yard. The vessel is expected to service deliveries from the Arctic LNG 2 project in Russia.
However, both the project and the new tanker are already under sanctions by the U.S. Treasury.
Alexey Kosygin and three other LNG tankers built on behalf of Russian state tanker operator Sovcomflot were sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in June 2024.
In the middle of the year, the U.S. began to ramp up sanctions on Russia’s LNG projects and vessels, aiming to stifle Vladimir Putin’s gas export revenues.
The Arctic LNG 2 project has been completed but it continues its struggles to sell gas from Russia’s newest but heavily sanctioned LNG export facility.
In one of the latest pieces of anecdotal evidence, a sanctioned LNG carrier, which had loaded liquefied natural gas in the Artic in August, traveled for four months around north Europe, the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, the Indian Ocean, along China’s east coast and north to Russia’s Far East, without finding a buyer for the cargo, tanker-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg showed earlier this week.
The LNG vessel, Pioneer, is sanctioned by the United States and so is the Arctic LNG 2 project, which is now put on ice.
Pioneer was one of three vessels – Pioneer, Asya Energy, and Everest Energy – targeted by the U.S. sanctions in August, as well as their registered owners Zara Shiphoding and Ocean Speedstar Solutions.
Located in the Gydan Peninsula in the Arctic, the Arctic LNG 2 project was considered key to Russia’s efforts to boost its global LNG market share from 8% to 20% by 2030-2035.