Sovcomflot’s sanctioned LNG carrier completes earliest Northern Sea Route transit in years

The 300 m-long, 174,000 cu m vessel entered the route at the end of May, heading east through heavy sea ice while carrying LNG from Novatek’s sanctioned Arctic projects. The voyage attracted attention as the year’s first eastbound passage, with the vessel breaking through the ice almost a month earlier than comparable transits in previous years. Publicly available MarineTraffic data now lists the nine-year-old vessel as out of range, with its last reported position in the Asian part of the Bering Sea, clearing the NSR.      In recent months, Christophe de Margerie has been shuttling cargoes from the sanctioned floating storage unit Saam off Russia’s Kola Peninsula. Last year, another Arc7 ice-class LNG carrier, Georgiy Ushakov, became the first vessel to sail eastbound along the route. That vessel is also under sanctions and has previously been associated with periods of AIS silence.      This year’s unusually early voyage underlines Moscow’s efforts to keep sanctioned Arctic LNG moving despite difficult ice conditions, trading restrictions and logistical hurdles. 

The combination of ice-class tonnage, floating storage units and early-season transits points to an expanding logistics workaround intended to maintain Russian Arctic gas flows to Asian buyers.