russia has expanded its ‘shadow’ fleet of gas tankers

This is reported by the Financial Times.

According to Windward, a company that collects data on maritime transport, at least eight second-hand LNG tankers have been sold to russia over the past six months, which were subsequently used to transport russian cargo.

As a result, the fleet has grown to 25 vessels, including two new ships built at the russian shipyard ‘Zvezda’.

This comes as the ban on imports of russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) into European Union countries draws ever closer – it is due to come into force on 1 January 2027.

A larger fleet will allow Moscow to continue selling gas after these restrictions are introduced – in much the same way that russia has used a ‘shadow’ fleet of oil tankers to circumvent Western sanctions.

russia’s ‘shadow’ oil fleet comprises over 1,000 tankers operating without Western insurance or documentation. Moscow is expanding its fleet of gas carriers more slowly, as these are far more complex vessels.

Four of the gas carriers recently acquired by russia have already transported cargoes from sanctioned LNG hubs. All of them fly the russian flag and have been given similar new names: ‘Kosmos’, ‘Orion’, ‘Merkury’ and ‘Luch’.

The first two gas carriers, built by russia itself, are the “Aleksey Kosygin” and the “Konstantin Posyet”. The former has been transporting cargo from the “Arctic LNG-2” plant since it was handed over to the state-owned shipping giant “Sovcomflot” in December, whilst the latter is not yet in service.

In addition, four more vessels are under construction at “Zvezda”.

“Shadow” LNG tankers are predominantly owned by russian-linked shell companies in Dubai, Hong Kong and Singapore, and fly the corresponding flags.

They resort to the same practices as the ‘shadow’ oil fleet – frequently jamming signals and transhipping cargo from vessel to vessel to conceal its origin. At the same time, this is considerably more difficult to carry out due to the nature of LNG transport.

Source: Ekonomichna Pravda