Russian LNG under sanctions went to Asia past Europe

The LNG shipment of the Baltic Portovaya complex, which is under sanctions, is heading to Asia. The first delivery in six months bypassed Africa.

The Perle gas carrier (formerly Pskov), which transports a shipment of LNG from the Portovaya Baltic complex, headed for the Cape of Good Hope. According to AIS vessels, on July 18, an LNG tanker passes in the Atlantic Ocean past the Strait of Gibraltar to the south. Apparently, the ship is going around Africa to deliver a shipment to Asian customers.

The draft of the gas carrier is 11.5 meters out of a possible 12.5 meters, which indicates that the vessel is carrying LNG cargo.

This is the first voyage made by LNG tankers to take liquefied gas abroad from the Portovaya complex since January, when it, like the project's gas carriers themselves, came under direct US sanctions.

Another LNG tanker, Valera (formerly Veliky Novgorod), continues to remain in the Gulf of Finland.

Perle can carry up to 100 million cubic meters of gas in the form of LNG and, possibly, should go to China. Recently, before the sanctions, Perle was doing this. Gazprom does not comment on such operations.

As reported by EADaily, the Baltic medium-tonnage LNG complex "Portovaya" with a capacity of 1.5 million tons was launched in September 2022 and at the beginning of the cargo was delivered to Greece and Turkey. Last year, a significant part of the parties went to China and there was a direction to Spain. The tanker Cool Rover delivered cargo there, which, after the January delivery, is still standing in one of the Spanish ports without work.

The US sanctions in January of this year on gas carriers and the Portovaya and Cryogaz Vysotsk projects were 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.

In February, Kommersant wrote that Perle was loaded on the "Port" with cargo for China and was supposed to deliver the shipment on March 22 to Tianjin, China. But something went wrong.

As a result, two loaded tankers transferred cargo to the Marshal Vasilevsky regasification tanker, which provides the Kaliningrad region. The ship picked up shipments in April and June.

The main problem of LNG projects that have been sanctioned is sales. Potential customers may be attracted by liquefied gas cargoes with discounts, but on the other side of the scale there is a high probability of secondary sanctions, which scares off most consumers.