More than a fifth of Russia’s liquefied natural gas reaching Europe is reshipped to other parts of the world, a practice that boosts Moscow’s revenues despite the EU’s efforts to curb them in response to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine— Financial Times.

While contracts for the so-called transshipment of Russian LNG have been banned in the UK and the Netherlands, data from 2023 suggests permitted Russian gas shipments are routinely transferred between tankers in Belgium, France and Spain before being exported to buyers in other continents.

Such ship-to-ship transfers are crucial for Russia as it attempts to make the best use of its “Arctic fleet” of tankers. The transshipment usually takes place between Russian “ice class” tankers that are used to run between the Yamal peninsula and Northwestern Europe and regular LNG tankers that then sail on to other ports, freeing up the Russian "ice-class" vessels to return north.