Russia’s largest independent natural gas producer, Novatek said Thursday it delivered its first cargoes of liquefied natural gas from the Yamal LNG project to China via the Northern Sea Route.
As previously reported by LNG World News, the 172,000-cbm ice-class LNG carriers Vladimir Rusanov and Eduard Toll left the Yamal LNG port in Sabetta end-June.
On Thursday, in the presence of Alexander Novak, the Minister of Energy of Russia and Nur Bekri, the Director of the National Energy Administration of China, an official ceremony was held to commemorate the arrival of the Arc7 LNG tankers to the Chinese port of Jiangsu Rudong.
The net voyage time from the port of Sabetta through the Northern Sea Route to the destination port was completed in 19 days as compared to 35 days for the traditional eastern route via the Suez Canal and the Strait of Malacca, Novatek said in its statement.
Yamal LNG is Novatek’s first and currently Russia’s second LNG export facility beside the Gazprom-operated Sakhalin LNG plant. The project started shipping the fuel onboard the ice-class tankers that are able to break ice up to 2.1 m thick in December last year.
Previously, these tankers only carried the fuel from the Yamal LNG plant to European terminals such as Belgium’s Zeebrugge or the Dutch Gate terminal from where the chilled gas is being transshipped or reloaded onto conventional tankers for delivery to other markets.
However, as the Arctic Summer began and the ice is not too thick anymore, the ice-class tankers are now able to deliver Yamal LNG cargoes to Asian-Pacific markets via the Northern Sea Route.
LNG World News Staff