Russia forges new route to bring Arctic LNG to Asian markets

The last year has seen record low Arctic sea ice cover when compared to other years since 1970, and this is allowing modern shipping to push ever further to develop new Arctic shipping lanes.
The 80,000 tonne-capacity Christophe de Margerie is a giant ice-class tanker fitted out to transport LNG, and docked in the port of Sabetta. The vessel was named after Total’s ex-CEO who died in a plane accident at Moscow airport in 2014.
Russia’s President Putin congratulated the crew and energy company officials gathered on the ship's bridge, saying: "This is a big event in the opening up of the Arctic."
The South Korean-built vessel was not picking up a cargo on its maiden voyage, but will eventually be used to transport gas from Russia's Yamal LNG plant, which is near the port.
The project, scheduled to start production in October, is led by Russian firm Novatek and co-owned by France's Total, and China's CNPC and the Silk Road Fund.
The Yamal LNG consortium sees Asia as the biggest market for its gas in the long term. Shipments to China from Yamal should take about 18 days using the Northern Sea route.
That journey would take vessels east through the Arctic Ocean, down through the Bering Strait that separates Russia from Alaska, and into the Pacific – a much shorter route than going west around Europe and Africa. The aim of the voyage was to prove the port can receive a tanker of that class.
After the Yamal plant reaches its full capacity, combined with the existing Sakhalin-2 LNG plant in the Pacific, Russia will produce almost 27 million tonnes of LNG annually, equal to the amount imported by China per year.
Novatek is studying whether to build another LNG plant, Arctic LNG-2, with capacity comparable to Yamal or higher and first production in around 2023.
A total of 15 gas tankers will be built for the Yamal project by Daewoo.