China Receives First Yamal LNG Cargoes
Russia’s Novatek delivered its first LNG cargoes from the Yamal LNG project to China via the Northern Sea Route July 19, the company said the same day.
An official ceremony was held to commemorate the arrival of two Arc7 LNG tankers Vladimir Rusanov and Eduard Toll at the Chinese port of Jiangsu Rudong. The ceremony was attended by Alexander Novak, Russian energy minister and Nur Bekri, the director of the National Energy Administration of China. Novatek July 6 had said that Vladimir Rusanov and Eduard Toll were completing the Northern Sea Route passage in an easterly direction.
Chinese entities own just under a third of the project; CNPC has 20% and the Silk Road Fund has 9.9%.
The net voyage time from the port of Sabetta through the Northern Sea Route to the destination port was completed in 19 days as compared with 35 days for the traditional eastern route via the Suez Canal and the Strait of Malacca, Novatek said, adding, Yamal LNG will utilise a fleet of 15 Arc7 ice-class LNG carriers with cargo capacity over 170,000 m3 each to transport LNG to key consuming regions.
"This voyage begins a new era of Russian LNG shipments to meet the growing natural gas demands of the Asian-Pacific markets using the Northern Sea Route of the Arctic Ocean,” said Novatek CEO Leonid Mikhelson. “The Northern Sea Route ensures shorter transportation time and lower costs, which plays a key role in developing our hydrocarbon fields on the Yamal and Gydan peninsulas. Our vast high-quality, conventional natural gas resource base combined with low capital intensity and operation and transportation costs positions Novatek’s LNG projects among the most competitive projects globally.”
Novatek created May 18 a transportation subsidiary called Maritime Arctic Transport to manage and optimise transportation costs, build up the unique competencies of Arctic navigation and ensure centralised management of the Arctic fleet.
Russian news agency TASS meanwhile quoted Novatek's Mikhelson saying that Yamal train 2 would launch in early August, while the overall project - so including T3 - would reach full capacity in early 2019.