Russia's Arctic LNG 2 halts commercial gas liquefaction due to Western sanctions - Bloomberg

The largest project of the russian company Novatek for the production of liquefied natural gas (LNG) Arctic LNG 2 stopped the liquefaction of natural gas due to the impact of Western sanctions on the plant's ability to ship and sell cargo.

This was reported by Bloomberg with reference to unnamed people familiar with the matter.

According to agency sources, Arctic LNG 2 has stopped commercial gas liquefaction due to high reserves of LNG, which the company cannot freely export due to sanctions.

One of the interlocutors reported that the stoppage of gas liquefaction led to the fact that the average daily production at the gas field decreased to 5.3 million cubic meters in the current month.

It emphasized that this is less than half of the daily output for most of September, which averaged 12.1 million cubic meters.

It is noted that some gas processing is necessary to maintain gas liquefaction facilities, even if they are not operating on an industrial scale. At the beginning of this year, the company processed small volumes of gas at the beginning of this year even before the start of loading.

Bloomberg writes that earlier this month, the assistant secretary for energy resources of the US Department of State, Geoffrey Pyatt, said that Washington will continue to "tighten the nuts" regarding russian LNG. The US wants to cut export revenues that Moscow is using to fund a full-scale war against Ukraine.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, in June 2024, it became known that russia is working on creating a shadow fleet to transport its LNG.

In July, the Financial Times reported, citing its own sources, that russia had secretly purchased more than 50 LNG tankers, registering them in Middle Eastern countries.

It will be recalled that earlier China was forced to return two liquefaction modules assembled for the russian Arctic LNG 2 due to the threat of American sanctions.