New Arctic carrier picks up first batch of sanctioned LNG
On its maiden voyage, the Konstantin Posiet sailed across the Northern Sea Route to the Gulf of Ob, where it loaded LNG at the heavily sanctioned Arctic LNG 2 facility.
The brand-new, 300-metre-long LNG carrier set out from the Zvezda Yard in Bolshoy Kamen, in Russia’s Far East, in late July, with a course for the Bering Strait and Arctic waters.
The vessel is the second LNG carrier with Arc7 ice-class protection built by a Russian shipyard. Its sister ship, the Aleksey Kosygin, was commissioned in late 2025 and has since shuttled across Russian Arctic waters.
Both ships have been built for the Arctic LNG 2 project by natural gas company Novatek.
On 30 August, the Konstantin Posiet sailed out of the Ob River with more than 70,000 tonnes of LNG on board. It was the carrier’s first visit to Utrenneye, a terminal for the LNG plant.
The Arctic LNG 2 project, along with its connected infrastructure and carriers, has been sanctioned by the US and a number of other countries. Only a few months after it was commissioned, the Aleksey Kosygin was added to the sanctions lists of the EU, US, and UK. The same is likely to happen shortly with the Konstantin Posiet.
The Arctic LNG 2 project is expected to become the largest LNG project in Russia, with an annual capacity of almost 20 million tonnes. International sanctions have significantly hampered project progress, and production is currently only a fraction of its capacity.
According to Reuters, tankers exported about 2.3 million tonnes of LNG from Arctic LNG 2 to the Chinese port of Benhai in the first eight months of 2026. A total of 31 shipments have been made.
The Konstantin Posiet is named after an 18th-century admiral who commanded several naval vessels during the reign of Tsar Aleksandr II. In 1870, the admiral was in charge of a naval flotilla that sailed along the Kola Peninsula and made a visit to Novaya Zemlya.
On board was Grand Duke Aleksei Aleksandrovich, the Tsar’s fourth son and a future admiral.
In late summer 1870, the flotilla entered Bøkfjorden, a branch of the Varanger Fjord, and anchored near Elvenes on the Norwegian side of the border. From there, they crossed by small boats to Boris Gleb, a 3.6-square-kilometre piece of Russian territory on the western shore of the Pasvik River. The visit came less than 45 years after the 1826 border agreement between Norway/Sweden and the Russian Empire.
