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EU shipyards are repairing Russian ice-class tankers and offering them dry dock facilities, enabling Moscow to continue moving gas through the Arctic despite western sanctions on the sector. its energy.

Without maintenance work – provided by the Damen shipyard in Brest, France, and Fayard A/S in Denmark – Russia’s Yamal LNG plant will struggle to access key winter markets when gas prices in the north parts of the world are at their highest.

The two yards have serviced 14 of the 15-strong fleet of special Arc7 tankers dispatched from Yamal LNG on Russia’s far north coast, according to satellite imagery and port-call tracking data from Kpler, a data and analytics company. Other ships called several times.

“If those two shipyards are off limits, it will put the entire logistics operation in doubt,” said Malte Humpert, an Arctic shipping specialist at High North News who tracks the ships’ movements. “They can get the service somewhere else but that means they have a good route.”

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

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

“No further repairs to these LNG vessels are planned for the foreseeable future,” it said.

Fayard did not respond to a request for comment.

Eliminating Russian gas is a central policy objective of the European Commission. However, its target to reduce the EU’s use of Russian fossil fuels to zero by 2027 has failed due to increased imports of Russian LNG, mostly supplied from Yamal.

The activities of ships and yards are not allowed because of the carve-outs for energy transport and because they are not flagged in Russia, and specialized tankers are not able to distribute their cargo without technical expertise and maintenance from European grounds.

The only one in the fleet that did not call at either of the two yards was the Christophe de Margerie, owned by the authorized Russian shipping company Sovcomflot.

The EU agreed to sanction the ship itself — the first step from the bloc to impose any sanctions on Yamal’s operations — on December 16. The US has already hit the Yamal project with waves of sanctions.

The inability of the Christophe de Margerie to access repair yards in Europe has put the ship out of service for six months, showing Arc7’s reliance on European know-how and parts, Humpert said.

From Yamal, ships can sail to Europe or the longer and more dangerous Northern Sea Route to China. The eastern route can only be navigated in the warmer months, although Novatek – owner of Yamal LNG – is experimenting with a longer shipping window.

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

It is more than 200m long and can carry around 170,000 cubic meters of natural gas with a specifically designed ‘Azipod’ propulsion system to navigate through thick ice.

A European shipbroker said that the French and Danish yards, which both have dry docks large enough for outsized tankers, are “the only ones capable of handling the Arc7s and the same time is located in the right place”.

While Russian crude and coal have been permitted, gas remains outside the bloc’s sanctions regime amid supply security concerns.

In the first step towards stopping the import of shipped gas, EU countries agreed in June to ban from March the trans-shipment of Russian LNG. This would stop EU ports being used to transfer gas from ice-class tankers to less expensive regular ships for shipment to other countries.

Yamal LNG exported 20.9bn cubic meters to Europe in 2023, according to OIES, of which almost a quarter was sent to destinations outside the bloc. Supplies from Yamal make up about 85 to 90 percent of Russia’s LNG imports to the EU, according to think-tank Bond Beter Leefmilieu.

More reporting by Shotaro Tani in London