/Reuters Agency
A liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker carrying cargo from Russia’s sanctioned Arctic LNG 2 project recently docked at the Beihai terminal in China, according to ship tracking data from Kpler and LSEG.
If the ship completes its unloading, it would be the seventh shipment the Chinese terminal has received from the Arctic LNG 2 project, which is under penalties due to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The Arctic Vostok vessel picked up LNG from a storage facility in Kamchatka, in the Russian Far East, on August 30, before heading towards the Beihai LNG terminal in China’s southern Guangxi region, according to Kpler. LSEG data indicated the vessel loaded the cargo on September 6.
The storage facility has only received shipments from the Arctic LNG 2 project. The maritime database Equasis indicates that the commercial or tanker manager is SMP Techmanagement, while the registered owner is Lule One Services.
Despite the sanctions, Arctic LNG 2 – 60% owned by the Russian company Novatek – has been shipping LNG since last year, with cargoes delivered to two storage facilities in Russia and to the Beihai LNG terminal.
The two latest cargoes shipped from the Arctic LNG 2 facility in Gydan, in northern Siberia, are currently sailing east through the Northern Sea Route on board the LNG tankers Christophe De Margerie and Voskhod.
Another sanctioned vessel, La Perouse, which also loaded 150,000 cubic meters of LNG from the sanctioned project, traveled south past Europe, Africa and across the Indian Ocean, and is now heading towards the Bay of Bengal, according to LSEG and Kpler data.
In turn, the sanctioned Arctic Metagaz, which is carrying cargo from Arctic LNG 2, is also currently near the Beihai LNG terminal in China. It picked up a cargo from a floating storage facility in Murmansk, in northwestern Russia, on July 17, according to Kpler data. This storage facility has also exclusively received shipments from the Arctic LNG 2 project.
