Russia Resumes Ship-to-Ship LNG Transfers Ahead of EU Transshipment Ban

By Malte Humpert (gCaptain) –

Transshipments of liquefied natural gas have resumed in Russia’s Arctic off Kildin Island near Murmansk. The restart comes around a month earlier than during previous years. The Kildin anchorage is located off the coast of the Kola Peninsula in the eastern Barents Sea.

Energy giant Novatek uses the ship-to-ship transfer of LNG to optimize the utilization of its fleet of ice-capable carriers. Mounting Western sanctions have rendered parts of Novatek’s logistics network, including two floating LNG storage units, unusable.

The first STS of the 2024/25 winter involves the Arc7 ice-class vessel Nikolay Urvantsev and Chinese newbuild Wen Cheng. Transfers routinely take around 48 hours. 

Satellite images show Nikolay Urvantsev and Wen Cheng at East Kildin on November 18. Additional transfers can be expected with Singaporean carrier Gui Ying destined for Kildin and holding nearby after traveling up the Norwegian seaboard based on AIS information.

The open water transfer of LNG will gain increasing importance in 2025 as the EU’s transshipment ban takes effect in March. Currently, around 20 percent of Russian Arctic LNG production from the Yamal project is re-exported via European terminals.

If Russia aims to transfer a similar volume via STS operations, the Kildin anchorage could see 55 additional reloadings throughout the next year. In a typical year the site sees around 20 transfers, primarily during winter when conventional LNG carriers can not travel to Yamal LNG.

Novatek previously relied on a transshipment point further west in sheltered Norwegian waters near the Nordkapp. It transferred several dozen cargoes near Honningsvåg between 2018 and 2020 before switching operations to Russian waters off Kildin Island in August of 2020. 

The company abandoned transshipments in Norway as the results of significant “Western pressure,” Novatek stated at the time. Norway had also faced significant criticism from the United States for playing host to the transfer of Russian natural gas “undercutting Europe’s energy diversification efforts.”

U.S. sanctions thwarted Novatek’s original plan to begin relying on the world’s largest floating LNG barge, Saam FSU, to transfer cargoes en route to Europe. It is off limits to products from Yamal LNG and remains largely unused except for a handful of test unloadings with sanctioned cargoes from Arctic LNG 2 earlier this summer.

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