How Russia managed to bypass sanctions on its tankers to sell gas

A sanctioned gas tanker from Russia was spotted near the Suez Canal during the transshipment of gas to an unsanctioned tanker from the UAE. This was reported by Reuters agency.

The US-sanctioned gas tanker loaded up at Russia’s new Arctic liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility this month, Arctic LNG-2, and was later spotted transferring the resource by ship to another tanker.

According to the Monitoring service TankerTrackers.com, the tanker Pioneer had transshipped the gas to the Palau-flagged, UAE-owned, Indian-operated tanker New Energy north of the Suez Canal.

The Arctic LNG 2 plant, which was planned to be Russia’s largest, began producing liquefied natural gas in December, but its exports have been hampered by Western sanctions related to Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Typically, transshipment ships offload LNG from pricey icebreakers to less expensive conventional gas carriers, but they can also complicate cargo tracking.

While some countries, including India, continue to buy Russian energy despite Western sanctions, they sometimes avoid publicizing the fact to avoid diplomatic tensions.

It also said that the tankers Pioneer and Asya Energy entered Russian waters in late July and engaged in several “deceptive shipping practices,” such as turning off the vessels’ automatic identification system (AIS).

The Arctic LNG 2 plant aimed to achieve a total production capacity of 19.8 million metric tons of LNG per year and 1.6 million tons of stable gas condensate per year from three production lines.