President Vladimir Putin officially launched the departure of a liquified gas production line along the Northern Sea Route. It will be towed to a field in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area.

After arriving in Murmansk, the Russian leader visited the Novatek‒Murmansk LNG Construction Center, where he examined the construction of the second LNG production line. It is being built for the Arctic LNG-2 project, which Novatek plans to launch in late 2023 or early 2024. Arctic LNG-2 is the company’s second large-capacity liquefied natural gas project after Yamal LNG. Under the project, there are plans to build three production lines with a capacity of 6.6 million tons each (or 19.8 million tons of LNG per year in total).

The construction of the lines takes place on gravity-based structures the size of a multi-story building, which are the largest floating structures in the world today. Domestic cranes in workshops can lift 300 tons of freight.

The LNG Construction Center has no analogues in the world. There, global-level technologies for the production of LNG are localized in Russia. The manufacturing of production lines involves hundreds of Russian enterprises and employs over 80,000 across Russia, including over 17,000 jobs in the Murmansk Region.

The finished LNG production line will be towed along the Northern Sea Route to the Utrenneye field on the Gydan Peninsula in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area, where a gas pipeline will be connected to it. The President took part in the launch ceremony.

“We have looked over the plant for the production of LNG facilities built here, near Murmansk. If such projects are implemented, then, indeed, the capacities will at least double. LNG production projects are certainly very important because they produce a multiplier effect on the entire economy,” Vladimir Putin said in his opening remarks.

According to the President, such projects allow Russia to win the share it needs on the global LNG market. The Russian leader stressed that the first project was operating successfully. The new project will provide much more traffic on the Northern Sea Route, which, Putin believes, will produce a multiplier effect for an entire range of industries. The investments must be used for the prosperity of the country’s economy, the president believes.