Rare overload of Russian LNG under sanctions spotted off Malaysia for the first time
Photo: EPA

A tanker of the "shadow" fleet carrying Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) under US sanctions was spotted during a rare fuel transshipment in the high seas off the coast of Malaysia. About writes Bloomberg.

This refers to the Perle vessel, which the United States put on the sanctions list earlier this year.

According to Sentinel-2 satellite imagery, on October 18, the tanker was parallel to another vessel about 90 kilometers east of the peninsula of Malaysia. Such a position usually means that the tanker is being overloaded.

This is an extremely rare operation for the transportation of liquefied natural gas, as such maneuvers are usually used to transfer oil between so-called "shadow" vessels that evade sanctions.

Bloomberg notes that this may be the first recorded transshipment of Russian LNG off the coast of Malaysia.

According to satellite monitoring, the second vessel is CCH Gas. It has been owned by CCH-1 Shipping from Hong Kong since May. The tanker transmits false coordinates, which is a typical practice for shadow fleet vessels.

Perle loaded gas back in February at the Russian Portovaya plant on the Baltic coast.

The plant has been under US sanctions since January and has not made any official export deliveries since then. After several months of inactivity, the tanker sailed to Asia in July, bypassing the Cape of Good Hope, but has now stopped transmitting signals about its location.

The vessel is operated by Dreamer Shipmanagement LLC-FZ, registered at the Meydan Hotel in Dubai, where other companies involved in the transportation of Russian sanctioned fuel operate.