Russia used the world’s largest floating LNG storage facility for shadow exports

Russia began using the world’s largest floating storage of liquefied natural gas in the “shadow fleet”.

The Saam FSU vessel has joined the “shadow fleet” of the Russian Federation, reports gCaptain with reference to vessel tracking services.

The Saam FSU LNG floating storage facility belongs to the Russian corporation “Novatek” and was built for the marine transshipment complex (MSC) in the Murmansk region. Since September 2023, the ship has been under US sanctions.

Next to it in the sea is the gas carrier Everest Energy, which has also recently come under sanctions.

On August 23, it became known that it is Everest Energy that can pick up the next batch of LNG from Arctic LNG 2. Probably, the gas carrier was transferring gas to the floating storage.

It is emphasized that Everest Energy did not attempt to manipulate the AIS signal this time. The gas carrier can be used to organize the connection between the Arctic LNG 2 plant and the Saam FSU storage facility.

The Saam FSU can provide buffer storage for approximately 16 days as the first Arctic LNG 2 line operates at just below 50% of its rated capacity, and up to 27 days when loaded at 30% (the minimum required to maintain the process gas liquefaction).

It will be recalled that a sanctioned gas carrier was exposed for transshipment of Russian LNG from ship to ship.

It is also known that the Russians have towed a platform for the production of LNG from near Murmansk, however, it is not known whether they will launch it, given the sanctions.

USM previously reported that the US Ministry of Finance imposed sanctions against seven gas carriers involved in Russia’s so-called shadow fleet.