Third cargo from Russia's sanctioned Arctic LNG 2 discharges and departs China

By Sam Li and Lewis Jackson

BEIJING (Reuters) -A third tanker from Russia's Arctic LNG 2 plant, which is under Western sanctions, discharged its cargo and exited a terminal in China on Wednesday, LSEG and Kpler's ship-tracking data showed.

The U.S.-sanctioned LNG tanker Zarya unloaded more than 160,000 cubic meters of LNG from the sanctioned Russian project Arctic LNG 2 at the Beihai LNG Terminal in Guangxi, southern China.

China has so far received three cargoes of LNG from Arctic LNG 2, totalling more than 386,000 cubic meters of LNG, according to data from LSEG.

Two more Arctic LNG 2 cargoes are a few days away from Beihai, on the 174,000 cbm Buran and the 174,000 cbm Iris. The Buran is signalling an estimated arrival date of September 13, according to data intelligence firm ICIS.

Arctic LNG 2, which was set to become one of Russia's largest LNG plants with eventual output of 19.8 million metric tons a year, was included in Western sanctions over Moscow's war in Ukraine and has been struggling to sell LNG from the project despite beginning production and loading cargoes in August 2024.

However, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Wednesday that President Donald Trump's stated priority is to bring the Russia-Ukraine war to an end without larger disruptions, when asked how the U.S. would react to Chinese purchases of sanctioned Russian LNG cargoes.

(Reporting by Sam Li and Lewis Jackson in Beijing; Editing by Susan Fenton)