The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office announced in a statement on Tuesday “70 new sanctions targeting Russia’s decrepit shadow fleet, military procurement supply chains, and illicit finance networks used to circumvent sanctions.”
The UK has now sanctioned almost 500 individuals, entities, and ships under its Russia sanctions regime in 2026 alone.
According to the statement, the UK is the first G7 country to sanction several LNG vessels recently acquired by Russia “at great expense to service Russia’s sanctioned Arctic LNG 2 project, responsible for exporting millions of tonnes of LNG.”
The vessels are Merkuriy (IMO 9326689), Kosmos (IMO 9300817), Luch (IMO 9317315), and Orion (IMO 9294264).
According to VesselValue data, these four steam LNG carriers were sold by Oman’s Asyad Shipping earlier this year.
Asyad Shipping announced in February that it had completed the sale of its partially-owned LNG vessels Ibra LNG, Ibri LNG, Nizwa LNG, and Salalah LNG, which were built by the company 20 years ago, for $110 million.
The data shows that Ibra LNG was purchased by Turkiye-based Fidelity Denizcilik ve Ticaret and renamed Zahit LNG, and subsequently bought by an unknown Chinese buyer and renamed Merkuriy.
The same Turkish firm bought the other three vessels.
Salalah was renamed Cargi LNG and also subsequently sold to an unknown Chinese firm, which renamed the vessel Kosmos.
The data shows that the Chinese buyer also purchased the other two LNG carriers, but then it sold the vessels to Russia-based Abakan LLC.
Nizwa was renamed Vakit LNG, then Orion, while Ibri was renamed Akit LNG, then Luch.
According to their AIS data over the last three months, all vessels appear to have visited Noavtek’s 360,000-cbm Saam FSU in Ura Bay near Murmansk, Russia, to load Arctic LNG volumes for onward delivery via Europe to Asia.
Arctic LNG 2
The Arctic 2 LNG project, in which Russian LNG exporter Novatek holds a 60 percent operating stake, has been severely impacted by sanctions imposed by the EU and the US.
Novatek delivered the second gravity-based structure platform from its yard near Murmansk to the site of the Arctic LNG 2 project located on the Gydan peninsula in August 2024.
The company completed the second GBS despite sanctions by the US, the EU, and the UK related to the Arctic LNG 2 project and LNG carriers.
The first GBS left the Belokamenka yard in July 2024, and Novatek completed the installation on the underbase foundation on the seabed at the Utrenniy terminal in August of the same year.
The first and second GBS each have a capacity of about 6.6 mtpa.
It is worth noting that a Novatek unit recently received Russian approval to acquire a 10 percent stake in the Arctic LNG 2 project from French energy giant TotalEnergies, according to a presidential decree.
