Rosatom announced on October 27 that the 2026 maintenance dredging programme at the Russian Arctic liquefied natural gas (LNG) port of Sabetta has been completed, with the approach channel's design dimensions and depths restored.
The corporation's trailing suction hopper dredger (TSHD) Darya removed 688,000 cubic metres of material from the approach channel during the navigation season.
Total volumes removed in the terminal waters, including work by outside vessels, exceeded 2.3 million cubic metres. Rosatom said operational surveys confirmed the target bottom levels had been reached.
Darya has since left Sabetta for its port of registry, where it will be laid up between navigation seasons and undergo scheduled technical maintenance.
The vessel's output exceeded the approximately 600,000 cubic metres Rosatom had forecast in September, when Darya began work after a passage from Vladivostok along the Northern Sea Route.
Acquired in 2026, it is the first dredger owned within the Rosatom structure and is operated by the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Hydrographic Enterprise.
Sabetta, on the western shore of the Gulf of Ob, freezes over and has a dredging window of about three months. Rosatom attributes the need for regular depth restoration to bottom accretion associated with large LNG carrier movements in the port.
The enterprise's acting director, Dmitry Ageyev, said in September that more than 70 million cubic metres had been dredged at Sabetta over five years and that about five million cubic metres would need to be removed annually from 2027.
The enterprise plans to acquire nine more dredging units to carry out all Gulf of Ob maintenance dredging with its own resources.