EU shipyards are repairing Russian Arctic LNG tankers.

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EU shipyards are repairing Russian ice-class tankers and providing dry-docking services, allowing Moscow to move gas in the Arctic despite Western sanctions on its energy sector.

Without the maintenance work – at the Damen shipyard in Brest, France, and Denmark’s Fayard A/S – Russia’s Yamal LNG plant would struggle to find critical markets in the northern hemisphere during the winter months, when gas prices are high.

The two yards serviced 14 of the 15-strong specialized ARC7 vessels from Yamal LNG on Russia’s far northern coast using satellite imagery and port call tracking data from Kepler, a data and analytics company. Some ships are called multiple times.

“If those two shipyards are off-limits, it puts the entire logistics operation in doubt,” said Malte Humpert, Arctic shipping specialist at High North News, who has followed the ships’ movements. “They can get the service elsewhere, but that means going well out of their way.”

Eight oil tankers have called on Damen, Fayard has served nine since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Most of the ships are owned by energy and shipping companies, including Greece’s Dinagas and Canada’s Tekay.

Damen confirmed that it had repaired “several vessels involved in Russian LNG transport” but added that this “strictly followed European sanctions” and “was not involved in the cargo selection made by the shipping companies operating these vessels”.

“No further maintenance of these LNG vessels is planned for the foreseeable future,” he said.

Fayard did not respond to a request for comment.

Shutting down Russian gas is a central policy objective of the European Commission. However, the EU aims to reduce Russia’s fossil fuel consumption to zero by 2027 due to increased imports of Russian LNG from Yamal.

The activities of the ships and yards are designed for power transports and because they are not under the Russian flag, and special tankers cannot distribute their goods without receiving technical knowledge and maintenance from European yards.

Christophe de Margerie is the only ship that has not called either yard, which is operated by the sanctioned Russian shipping company Sovkomflot.

The European Union agreed to block the ship itself – the first move by the bloc to impose any sanctions on Yamal operations – on 16 December. The US has already hit the Yamal project with a wave of sanctions.

Christophe de Margerie’s inability to find repair yards in Europe put the ship out of service for six months, which shows Arc7’s confidence in European expertise and parts, Humpert said.

From Yamal the ships could sail to Europe or take the longer and more dangerous northern sea to China. Although Novatek – the owner of Yamal LNG – has tried a longer loading window, travel to the eastern route is only possible during the warmer months.

The Arc7 LNG carriers were built in South Korea at a cost of around $333 million per vessel, according to research by the Oxford Institute for Energy Research.

They are over 200m long and can carry around 170,000 cubic meters of natural gas with a specially designed ‘Azipod’ propulsion system to travel through thick ice.

A European shipbroker said the French and Danish yards, both of which have enough dry docks for foreign tankers, “are both capable of handling Arc7s and are in the right place at the same time”.

Gas remains outside the bloc’s sanctions amid concerns about security of supply, with Russian crude oil and coal embargoed.

In the first move to import the transported gas, EU countries have agreed to ban Russian LNG transshipments from March. This will stop EU ports using inexpensive regular ships to transport gas from ice-level tankers to other countries.

Yamal LNG It sent 20.9bn cubic meters to Europe in 2023, according to OIES, of which a quarter was sent to destinations outside the union. The supply from Yamal accounts for 85 to 90 percent of the EU’s total Russian LNG imports, according to think tank Bond’s Better Lifmiliu.

Additional reporting by Shotaro Tani in London