China imported record volumes of liquefied natural gas from Russia in December, up from the previous record set the month prior, and more than double the estimates from ship-tracking services.
China’s LNG imports from Russia hit 1.9 million tons last month, according to official customs data cited by Bloomberg on Thursday. That’s higher than the 1.6 million tons of Russian LNG imported in November, which was also a record. The officially reported volumes in December are more than double compared to 850,000 tons estimated in ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.
The reason for the huge difference wasn’t immediately clear, but analysts have offered several possible explanations, ranging from an uptick in winter gas demand in China, to discrepancy between cargo arrivals and customs clearance, and, of course, the shadow trade of sanctioned Russian LNG volumes making their way to China.
If more cargoes of the shadow fleet have switched off transponders or faked positioning and routes, ship-tracking services may have missed a lot of LNG cargo traffic bound for China.
Even in the winter, Russia is keeping its sanctioned LNG trade with China alive, thanks to an ice-class vessel capable of ploughing through the thick Arctic ice.
Early this month, the sanctioned Christophe De Margerie ice-class LNG tanker was set to export its third cargo since December 20 from the Arctic LNG 2 project in Russia, which is under sanctions by the United States, the EU, and the UK.
The Christophe De Margerie is the only ice-breaker tanker of the Russian shadow fleet that ship-tracking services have identified so far as operating on the route between Arctic LNG 2 and the Chinese LNG import terminal of Beihai. The Chinese port has specialized in recent months in accepting all the sanctioned Russian LNG cargoes, both from Arctic LNG 2 and from the Portovaya LNG small-scale plant on the Baltic Sea, Gazprom’s only LNG export facility.
With only one ice-class tanker capable of traveling through the Arctic ice all year round, Russia has boosted shipments from Portovaya LNG on the Baltic Sea. Portovaya and its Russia-based operator, Gazprom SPG Portovaya Limited Liability Company, were sanctioned by the United States in January 2025 in one of the last actions of the Biden Administration in a barrage of sanctions to “degrade Russia’s energy sector.”
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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