OREANDA-NEWS  The Russian gas company Novatek has provided customers from China with discounts on liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Arctic LNG-2 project in the amount of 30-40 percent. This is reported by Reuters with reference to sources.

Such a huge discount is due to the fact that for a long time it was not possible to find other buyers for the shipments shipped from the sub-sanctioned project on the Gydan Peninsula.

LNG production at Arctic LNG-2 began back in December 2023, but after being included in the SDN-List of the US Treasury, potential buyers refused the deals. Throughout 2024, Novatek tried to sell at least one batch, but in the end, everything had to be stored. It was possible to sell cargo to China for the first time only in August 2025.

According to the agency's interlocutors, the first batch cost the buyer $ 32 million at a market value of 44 million. Since that moment, 14 shipments have already been sent.

Earlier, Bloomberg found out that China has begun assembling its own shadow fleet of gas carriers to deliver shipments from Arctic LNG-2. At least two vessels involved in the delivery already fall under this definition. Nevertheless, experts note that it is much more difficult to make such a fleet invisible than in the case of oil. There are ten times fewer gas carriers in the world than oil tankers, in addition, the vast majority of them can travel in Arctic waters only in summer.