Silence descends on Belokamenka

On the 25th of July, two powerful tugboats towed the 640,000 ton heavy gravity-based structure out of the Kola Bay towards the Barents Sea. With its height of more than 110 meter, the colossus attracted wide attention as it sailed past Severomorsk, the Northern Fleet’s headquarter city.

Satellite photos from the 25th of July show three tugs towing the structure past the Navy base. Two days later, the number of tugs was increased to five.

The production platform is expected to spend about 20 days on the more than 2,000 km long voyage to Utrenneye, the production site for the Arctic LNG 2 in the Gulf of Ob.

The gravity-based  structure is key component in Novatek’s grand Arctic project. It is designed to produce up to 6,6 million tons of LNG per year and projected to be docked in Utrenneye next to two similar structures. A first structure arrived in the remote Arctic bay in August 2023. The third structure remains in the LNG construction center in Belokamenka .

The Arctic LNG 2 was to make Russia one of the world’s biggest producers of liquified natural gas. But the war against Ukraine and subsequent international sanctions have made the project a nightmare for Novatek and its leaders Leonid Mikhelson and Gennady Timchenko.

The platform that soon will arrive in Utrenneye might not produce any LNG of significance any time soon. The same goes for the structure that has been on site since August 2023. And the third structure might never leave Belokamenka.

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According to Arkticheskaya Obozrevatel, a news site in Murmansk, the construction center in Belokamenka is now almost emptied of workers.

Contracts are being terminated and all workers will leave the yard by September, the news site informs on Telegram. Only a small group of specialists will remain to preserve the industrial facilities.

The discontinuation of the project is confirmed by several comments on a social media page devoted to the Belokamenka yard.

“Everyone is being fired and the project is abandoned,” a reader says on the VK page.

The situation is a stark contrast to the situation only few months ago when Belokamenka was bustling with more than 15,000 workers engaged in the construction processes.

In July 2023, Novatek leader Leonid Mikhelson showed Vladimir Putin around at the yard. “It is a world-class industrial site,” Mikhelson told the dictator.

It is first of all the sanction imposed by the U.S Treasury that has curbed the LNG project.

In November 2023, the Americans put the Arctic LNG 2 on their sanctions list. Before that, the Saam, a 400 meter long vessel projected to serve as transshipment hub for the project, was also sanctioned. In early May 2024, the US Treasury took aim also at several heavy lift carriers of paramount importance for Novatek’s delivery of project components.

Then, in June 2024, the U.S Treasury added also the Obsky LNG, Arctic LNG 1 and Arctic LNG 3 to the sanctions list. None of the listed projects are in operation, but they are seen as crucial parts of future Russian natural gas production in the Arctic.

The aim is to «limit Russia’s future energy revenues and impede Russia’s development of future energy projects […],» the Americans say.

The mounting sanctions ultimately made also the Chinese pull out of the project.

In June, the Chinese company Wison New Energies announced that it will end its operations in Russia. The company has built all modules for the second train of the Arctic LNG 2 and been a crucial partner for Novatek.