Vizmaya desk · Energy

Nobody agrees how much gas one sanctioned Russian plant ships

Two respected trackers give two very different totals. To see why, we start at the very beginning.

Vizmaya desk · 14 October 2026

Start here

Gas takes up a lot of room. So we squeeze it.

Natural gas spreads out and fills any space it gets. That makes it hard to carry across an ocean.

Cool it enough and it turns into a liquid that needs far less room. Now it fits on a ship. This is LNG: liquefied natural gas.

The key idea

A ship links a seller to a buyer.

A plant makes the liquid. A ship carries it. A port turns it back into gas. One cargo, one trip.

That matters for one reason: you can watch a ship. If you can watch the ship, you can count the gas.

Key numbers

The LNG world is big, and most of it is counted in the open.

428million tonnes
of LNG imported around the world.
2025 · GIIGNL
899ships
carrying or handling LNG at the end of the year.
End of 2025 · GIIGNL
42%
more capacity is on order, compared with today's fleet.
End of 2025 · GIIGNL
17.4Bcf a day
of gas the US sent out as LNG, up 23% on a year before.
Jan-Jun 2026 · EIA

Chart 1 · The shape

Even the price of hiring a ship is posted weekly.

A day rate is the cost of hiring one gas ship for one day. Spark Commodities publishes it every week.

On 3 March, as the Gulf war cut Qatar's gas, it hit $278,250. By mid-September it was $25,250.

Source: Spark Commodities via LNG Prime. Sept. dates approximate.

Chart 2 · The split

For US gas, a government agency writes down where it lands.

The US Energy Information Administration publishes where American LNG goes. These were the top five buyers in the first half of 2026.

Anyone can check it. Keep that in mind.

Source: US Energy Information Administration, Jan-Jun 2026.

What changed

In three weeks, three things changed. One is about secrecy.

A price slump, a Qatar warning, and new sanctions. We follow the third.

Sources: LNG Prime, The National, GOV.UK.

The news

On 1 October the UK named eight ships and one company.

A sanction is a rule: do not do business with this ship or company. The UK says Russia is building a new fleet to keep its gas money flowing. Some of these ships only began work in July.

Also named: Novatek Gas and Power Asia, the Singapore arm of Russian gas firm Novatek.

How many carry LNG is contested: five (Reed Smith) or six (Kpler). Sources: GOV.UK, Kpler.

First principles

Counting a cargo depends on where you stand.

Say a ship loads at the plant, hands the gas to a storage ship still inside Russia, and another ship then takes it to China.

Count at the plant and you see it early. Count only at the border and you see nothing until the last leg. Kpler says it counts the second way.

Toy example, not real data. Kpler's rule: Kpler.

The gap

For 2025, two trackers give totals more than twice apart.

Kpler, a ship-tracking firm, counts 0.54 million tonnes from Arctic LNG 2. LSEG, a data firm whose figures Reuters reported, counts 1.2 million.

That is 2.2 times apart, same plant, same year. They may be counting different things. We mark it contested.

Chart 3 · The stress point

Is the plant growing or shrinking? It depends on who you ask.

So far in 2026, to 5 October, Kpler counts 0.95 million tonnes. Next to Kpler's 2025, that is almost double. Next to LSEG's 2025, it is about a fifth lower.

Same 2026 number, opposite story. This mixes two trackers, so read it as a warning, not a measurement.

Our arithmeticKpler, LSEG via Baird Maritime.

What the filings leave out

Even who owns a ship takes digging.

A ship has a manager who runs it day to day and an owner who benefits. They are often different companies.

For Aleksey Kosygin, one of the new ships, Kpler's data shows a manager and a separate owner. Novatek sits in the structure around all three new ships.

Per Kpler ownership data and the UK notice. Kpler, Maritime Executive.

Lens read · Concealment

Who gains when the numbers are fuzzy?

InterpretationOur reading: the people running the workaround gain most. Novatek and its buyers need ships and customers, and this plant's gas goes to China. If outsiders cannot agree how much is moving, they cannot say how well sanctions are working.

We cannot show anyone meant this. What we can show is plain. The UK's announcement gives no tonnage. Two trackers differ by more than two times. And a ship's owner sits behind a manager you have to look up.

The counter-case

Or maybe nothing is hidden at all.

Kpler says the links around these ships were visible before they were sanctioned. It also says openly that moves inside Russia are left out of its export count. The gap may just be definitions.

And the stakes are small for the world's gas supply: 0.95 million tonnes is roughly 1 in 450 of the 428 million imported worldwide in 2025.

Rough: different periods. GIIGNL, Kpler.

What to watch next

Four things that will settle, or deepen, the argument.

To November
Qatar tells some buyers deliveries will keep falling short.Fact · The National
1 Jan 2027
The UK bans shipping and insurance services for Russian LNG. The EU's phase-out of Russian LNG under long-term contracts starts the same day.Fact · Kpler, Reed Smith
Open question
Will Japan list Sovcomflot's gas carriers, as it has its oil tankers?Open question raised by Kpler
Our guess
More new ships are still being finished at the Zvezda yard, so more early listings are plausible.Speculation

Sources and claims log

What we checked, and what we left out.

26claims logged
16verified
3contested
7unverified, kept off

Contested, and gaps

  • Contested: Arctic LNG 2 volume for 2025 (0.54 vs 1.2 million tonnes); how many of the eight ships carry LNG (five or six); orderbook ratios (39% to 44%).
  • Not found: the UK's own 2025 volume figure on GOV.UK; a second source for the 6 October rate; the UK notice PDF.
  • Not on the page: single-source figures, such as a Hormuz tanker count and idle-ship numbers.
  • Photos: none used, as licences could not be checked.

vizmaya desk · 14 October 2026. Full research file available on request.