Foreign companies freeze participation in major Russian LNG project - media

According to Ukrinform, this was reported by The Bell.

The foreign shareholders, who together own 40% of the project, declared force majeure on their contracts, following the announcement last week by Russia's Novatek (which owns the rest of the project). This was done after the sanctions imposed by the United States.

In fact, the foreign partners have abandoned their financing obligations, and Novatek may be forced to finance the project on its own. This makes it more difficult for Arctic LNG-2 to sell, finance and deliver gas and may lead to Arctic LNG-2 losing long-term LNG export contracts. In addition, Arctic LNG-2 will be forced to sell gas on the spot market.

At the same time, Russia is facing a critical issue of ice-class tankers for LNG exports under this project. The Zvezda shipyard is delaying the delivery of tankers due to equipment problems.

As Ukrinform reported, the start of supplies from Russia's new Arctic LNG 2 project would be postponed as the company announced force majeure with supplies due to U.S. sanctions. After that, China's largest state-owned oil corporations CNPC and CNOOC appealed to the U.S. government to exempt them from the sanctions. The U.S. government did not respond.