Gazprom’s sanctioned LNG plant has been turned into a gas station — EADaily, December 12th, 2025 — Politics, Russia

For the first time, an LNG-powered oil tanker refueled at the Portovaya Baltic complex. At the beginning of the year, the Gazprom plant came under sanctions and stopped exporting, limiting itself to shipments to Kaliningrad. Deliveries to China resumed in the fall, but the pace of delivery will not allow the plant to operate at full capacity for the time being and, obviously, refueling ships will not interfere with the project.

According to the AIS of the vessels, the oil tanker Okeansky Prospekt, owned by the Russian Sovcomflot, has joined the terminal of the Portovaya LNG complex. Obviously, this is the first refueling of an LNG-powered vessel at a Gazprom plant.

The Okeansky Prospekt oil tanker belongs to a new series of vessels and runs on liquefied gas. Sovcomflot took over the vessel at the end of December 2022 at the Zvezda shipyard in the Far East.

“As the main fuel, (these) tankers use liquefied natural gas (LNG), which makes it possible to significantly reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere, as well as to reduce emissions of fine particles (soot) and sulfur oxides to zero,” Sovcomflot reported.

Now Sovcomflot has several such “green” oil tankers. And in November, the company also received an LNG—powered oil tanker, the Ivan Aivazovsky.

The Baltic medium-tonnage LNG complex “Portovaya” with a capacity of 1.5 million tons was launched in September 2022 and at the beginning the cargoes were delivered to Greece and Turkey. Last year, a significant part of the parties went to China and there was a direction to Spain. In January, when the United States announced sanctions, loading stopped and most of the fuel this year went to the Kaliningrad region.

Exports resumed in autumn. The Perle gas carrier loaded the first batch off the coast of Malaysia onto another tanker, and this week another gas carrier, Valera, delivered Baltic LNG directly to China — to the terminal in Beihai.

Okeansky Prospekt started refueling after the tanker Perle received a new batch. On December 12, he passed the English Channel and, obviously, will also head to China.

It is not known whether the refueling of “green” oil tankers will become traditional. It is known that while shipments at Portovaya are significantly lower than full capacity.