Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 Sees Flurry of Activity Following Alaska Summit, Including Shipment of Valuable Gas Condensate

For more than a year Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 project has remained in sanctions limbo. Though the plant continues to operate at a reduced rate and shipped out several cargoes it has yet to find any buyers.

Following the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska the project has seen a marked uptick in activity raising questions if the topic of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) was on the agenda in Anchorage.

Russian gas carriers that had idled for many months in the Barents Sea almost simultaneously started heading toward Asia.

The first of 2025

Three tankers, Iris, Voskhod, and Zarya all started moving at 21:00 UTC on August 14 right in the middle of the one-on-one meeting between Presidents Trump and Putin. Other vessels already in the Far East altered their course thereafter, seemingly heading in the direction of China. 

Then over the weekend a gas condensate tanker showed up at Arctic LNG 2 to load this particularly valuable kind of hydrocarbon, a first during 2025.

Taken together this level of shipping activity surrounding Arctic LNG 2 is a significant deviation from the recent norm, all occurring following the Alaska summit.

"Surprising"

Curiously the tanker in question is not associated with Arctic LNG 2 or its operator Novatek, but is run by a competitor. 

“The first condensate cargo of 2025 appears to have been picked by the Arc7 ice-class shuttle tanker Shturman Koshelev, operated by Gazprom Neft Shipping,” explains Ben Seligman, a project specialist for Arctic oil and gas development, who was first to point out this unusual loading at the plant.

“It is quite surprising to see a tanker from a competitor project and company suddenly head over to Utrenniy [Arctic LNG 2] to pick up a cargo of condensate,” Seligman continued.

The visit by Shturman Koshelev is especially noteworthy as the vessel has served Gazprom Neft’s Arctic Gates export facility on the Yamal Peninsula, along with several other similar ice class tankers.

The Barents Sea shadow fleet vanishes over night

For much of the past year up to a dozen Russian LNG carriers idled in the waters of the Barents Sea to the northeast of Norway. With last week’s departure only two vessels, Arctic Metagaz and La Perouse, remain.

Novatek’s persistence in continuing construction of the plant with Chinese help and loading cargoes from Arctic LNG 2 highlights the importance of oil and gas projects and their associated revenues for Russia.

Despite the hurdles in finding buyers the company continued assembling a fleet of LNG carriers.

Valuable export

The vessels shuttled more than a million cubic meters of supercooled gas to waters outside Europe and Asia in the hope that price incentives and a softening sanctions environment would eventually yield a positive outcome.

Since the beginning of the fullscale invasion of Ukraine fossil fuel exports have earned the Kremlin in excess of $1 trillion. 

With a half-dozen loaded vessels now heading for Asia, exports from Arctic LNG 2 could be adding to that total in the near future.