Sanctioned Russian LNG Cargo Ends Across-the-World Trip Without Finding Buyer | OilPrice.com

Arctic LNG 2 continues its struggles to sell gas from Russia’s newest but heavily sanctioned LNG export project.

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 on Thursday.

The LNG vessel, Pioneer, is sanctioned by the United States and so is the Arctic LNG 2 project, which is now put on ice.

After the journey from Europe to Russia’s Far East, Pioneer was spotted in December offloading the cargo in a Russian floating storage unit near Kamchatka, according to the vessel-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.

As early as this summer, Russia started shipping LNG from its flagship Arctic LNG 2 project—but not to customers.

The shipments have been made from the Arctic project to floating storage units either in Russia or in European waters, as potential customers are unwilling to buy LNG from the facility, which has seen tightened Western sanctions in the past months.

In August, the U.S. State Department intensified efforts to derail Arctic LNG 2 exports by targeting companies involved in the development of the project and vessels found to have loaded LNG from the facility.

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.

Since then, the U.S., the EU, and the UK have further tightened the screws on Russia’s LNG vessels and Arctic LNG 2 exports in a series of additional sanctions.

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.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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