Gas hills: why LNG exports from Russia are declining

Alexey Belogoryev, Research and Development Director of the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented to Forbes on the current state and prospects of Russian LNG exports.

"Yamal LNG and Sakhalin 2 remain the main LNG exporting companies, while Arctic LNG-2 remains the outsider. Yamal LNG and Sakhalin 2 continue to operate steadily, with total production growth in the range of 1% year-on-year in 2025," Alexey Belogoryev notes.

He recalls that no sanctions have been imposed on these enterprises, the main volumes of their supplies have been contracted, and they are provided with a fleet of gas carriers, although most of them are not directly connected with Russia, but are managed and owned by foreign companies.

"Given Japan's special position on Sakhalin 2, it probably won't have any significant problems in the future," Belogoryev believes. — The same cannot be said about Yamal LNG: 75% of its supplies still go to Europe, and if the EU countries realize the threat of abandoning imports of Russian LNG by the end of 2027, Novatek will face the non-trivial task of finding new sales markets and increasing the fleet of gas carriers to ensure a sharp increase in the average transportation distance".

Arctic LNG-2 is included in the US sanctions list. The project currently has two main problems, and which one is more difficult is debatable, he says. The first problem is the lack of Arctic class Arc7 gas carriers.

"At best, the first of them, Alexey Kosygin, will arrive from the Zvezda plant in the fall, although its delivery has been postponed more than once," Belogoryev says. "Without it, the situation of last year will repeat itself: the navigation window for shipments is limited to August—October due to the ice conditions, and for this reason, the plant has been completely idle since October 2024, and shipments cannot be expected from it before the second half of July - early August."

Belogoryev considers the numerous sanctions against Arctic LNG-2, which Forbes previously wrote about, to be the second problem.