LSEG data on Tuesday showed that Russia's January to May LNG exports increased by 6.3% compared to a year ago, reaching 13.6 million metric tonnes.

Europe accounted 55% of total or 7.5 millions tons.

The data shows that exports were essentially unchanged in May compared to April, at 2.7 millions tons.

In the first five month of this year, Yamal LNG, owned by Novatek, sent 8.1 millions tons of LNG, while Sakhalin-2 (controlled by Gazprom) exported 4.5million tons.

Kommersant, citing Kpler, reported that Novatek in Yamal used four conventional LNG carriers: the North Air (North Mountain), North Sky (North Way), and North Way (North Way).

The European Union does not impose sanctions on LNG exports to Russia.

As part of the 14th package on sanctions against Russia, the European Union has proposed to ban reloading services provided by EU facilities in order to transship Russian LNG into third countries. This could increase costs for LNG exported from Russia. (Reporting and writing by Oksana Kobieva; editing by Jason Neely).