Russia's liquefied natural gas plant Yamal LNG, led by Novatek, has acquired a new gas carrier for ship-to-ship operations near the Arctic port of Murmansk, ship-tracking LSEG data showed on Thursday.
According to the data, the tanker called North Moon is located near the island of Kildin in the Barents Sea, where LNG dispatched from Yamal LNG is being re-loaded from ice-class Arc7 tankers.
Ship-to-ship transfers usually involve moving LNG from ice-class tankers on to conventional ones, but can also be used to complicate cargo tracking.
Yamal LNG restarted the operations in the Murmansk region last November.
Western sanctions over the war in Ukraine as well as shortages of gas carriers are a challenge for Russia in its pursuit of raising its share on global LNG marker to ten per cent of the global LNG market by 2030-2035, compared to around eight per cent at present.
Nord Moon was built in 2024 and is owned by Singapore-registered Arctic Emerald no.2 LNG Shipping, operated by Japan's Mitsui OSK Lines (MOL).
Russia, the world's fourth largest LNG producer behind the US, Australia and Qatar, currently has two large-scale LNG plants: the Novatek-led Yamal LNG, which produced around 20 million tonnes last year, and Gazprom's Sakhalin-2, with an output of more than 10 million tonnes last year.
Novatek's other plant, Arctic LNG 2, has been struggling to sell cargoes despite starting operations in late 2023. An industry source told Reuters last October that Novatek shut down commercial operations at Arctic LNG 2 with no plans to restart it during winter.
(Reporting by Reuters; editing by David Evans)