Russia Opts for Ship-To-Ship LNG Transfers to Free Up Ice-Class Tankers

Russia plans to arrange ship-to-ship transfers of liquefied natural gas and gas condensate in the Barents and Bering Seas to free up more ice-class tankers for its biggest LNG producer, Novatek, a draft project document showed on Tuesday.

Novatek has been pressing ahead with its new Arctic LNG 2 project despite Western sanctions restricting access to the tankers it needs to carry LNG along the Northern Sea Route to Asian markets. Loadings of Russian LNG will be prohibited in EU ports from March 2025.

To address its shortage of vessels able to navigate Arctic waters, Russia plans to have those it does have unload their cargoes to regular vessels at sea, freeing them up for new shipments, the draft seen by Reuters showed.

Novatek did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to the draft, the first area for ship-to-ship transfers will be set up near the Chosha Bay in the Barents Sea for Obsky Ammiak, a subsidiary of Novatek.

Russia then plans to set up a second facility with the same capacity in Kresta Bay in the Bering Sea, the draft showed.

Transfers - which will only happen when ship movement is not hindered by ice - will allow for the loadings of 4.1 million cubic metres of LNG and 1.4 mcm of gas condensate a year in each facility, the document showed.

Novatek already uses the same scheme to perform ship-to-ship LNG transfers off the coast of Russia's Murmansk region.

(Reuters - Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Jan Harvey)