Gazprom sent Baltic LNG bypassing Europe: a whole terminal went through the ice

The LNG tanker terminal "Portovoy" went along the Northern Sea Route. The vessel used at the Portovaya Baltic complex near Nord Stream was obviously sent on a voyage due to a higher ice class than the gas carriers that serve the project.

According to AIS of vessels, the LNG tanker terminal Portovoy, coming from the Portovaya complex in the Baltic Sea, did not stop in Murmansk and went along the Northern Sea Route. On August 24, the vessel completed a detour of Novaya Zemlya from the north and left the Barents Sea in Karskoe. The tanker can carry more than 80 million cubic meters of gas in the form of LNG.

Meanwhile, the gas carrier of the Valera project returned to the Baltic Sea after a voyage to China. EADaily wrote that the ship, after bypassing the UK from the north, could also have headed for the Northern Sea Route, but it turned to the Baltic and today is anchored at the Portovaya complex. Another tanker, Marshal Vasilevsky, took the place of the terminal in Portovaya. He came from Kaliningrad.

Obviously, the flight of the entire 277-meter Portovy storage terminal along the Northern Sea Route is connected with the ice class of the vessel — Arch4. It is higher than that of the project's gas carriers — Perle and Valera (Ice2). Although it is smaller than the LNG tankers of the Yamal LNG project (Agsh7), which at the peak of navigation on the Northern Sea Route furrow the shortest route to China.

Perhaps the decision to send the "Port" is due to the fact that navigation is underway on the Northern Sea Route, but there are still "bottlenecks". So, the ice forces you to make the transition from the Kara Sea to the Laptev Sea not through the Vilkitsky Strait, but to bypass the islands from the north. In addition, in the East Siberian Sea, due to ice fields, ships go part of the way near the coast, including gas carriers of the highest ice class.

Nuclear icebreakers continue to be on duty at the Northern Sea Route, but their wiring costs tens of millions of rubles and, obviously, companies are optimizing costs.

This will be the first passage of a Russian gas carrier with Baltic LNG bypassing Europe this year. On the one hand, the Northern Sea Route is the shortest route to China, which reduces the delivery time by almost half. On the other hand, the threat of seizure of vessels with Russian oil and gas under sanctions has not gone away. Restrictions have been imposed on Perle and Valera, although Portovoy itself is not under sanctions.

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. In 2024, a significant part of the shipments went to China, but a gas carrier also operated to deliver LNG from Portovaya to Spain and small vessels sailed to the Belgian Zeebrugge. In January 2025, the United States imposed sanctions on the complex and the project shifted to Asia. However, the first two batches were handed over in China only in the fall.

In total, since the introduction of sanctions, the project has exported six batches. Everything else was supplied to Kaliningrad.