At the end of July, the transit of Russian gas through Lithuania stopped again. Apparently, the floating LNG terminal is again dumping regasified fuel into a storage facility in the Kaliningrad region. Because of the sanctions, the Baltic Portovaya complex has almost stopped working and it needs to put LNG somewhere.
According to ENTSOG, on July 26, the transit of Russian gas to Kaliningrad via Lithuania stopped again. Deliveries fell both at the point of entry into the region from Lithuania and at the exit from Belarus. This is the fourth case in a year when transit stops.
Lithuanian operator Amber Grid indicates in the materials that preventive maintenance work on the highway is scheduled for August. Therefore, obviously, the stop is again connected with the unloading of the Marshal Vasilevsky regasification tanker, which serves as a floating LNG terminal for the exclave.
Similar stops have already occurred in February, April and May. Judging by the AIS data of the vessels, they are related to the fact that Marshal Vasilevsky was unloading and taking the following gas shipments from the Portovaya Baltic complex, which belongs to Gazprom. And he did it both directly and through the project's gas carriers, which, like himself, fell under US sanctions.
As a result, only the Kaliningrad terminal, in fact, provided the work of the "Port" since February. It is quite possible that after the delivery of gas to the gas transportation system of the Kaliningrad region and pumping it into storage facilities at the end of July, Marshal Vasilevsky will go to Portovaya for a new batch.
Another cargo from Portovaya, as reported by EADaily, is now going to Asia. The tanker Perle (formerly Pskov) is heading there around Africa. This may be the first export delivery of LNG from the project after the sanctions come into force.
One batch of LNG can be up to 100 million cubic meters. The Baltic medium-tonnage LNG complex "Portovaya" with a capacity of 1.5 million tons was launched in September 2022, and initially the cargoes were delivered to Greece and Turkey. Last year, a significant part of the parties went to China and there was a direction to Spain.
Sanctions against gas carriers and the Portovaya and Cryogaz Vysotsk projects have become an unpleasant surprise for Gazprom and Novatek, but will not seriously affect the overall export of Russian LNG. The total design capacity of the two sanctioned complexes is 2.2 million tons (3 billion cubic meters). This is about 6-7% of Russian LNG exports.
At the same time, by the end of the year, the contract between Gazprom and the Lithuanian operator Amber Grid for gas transit to the Kaliningrad region is coming to an end and nothing has been reported about its extension so far. Alexey Grivach, Deputy Director of FNEB, told EADaily that the continuation of transit is a basic scenario, since it is beneficial to all parties, and LNG supplies are an alternative — in case of failures.