The Hidden Beneficiaries of Yamal LNG

How EU companies profit from Russian gas and keep the Arctic project alive

Instead of rejecting Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG), European countries increased their purchases to record levels in the spring of 2026. In the context of the war in Iran, deliveries from the Yamal LNG plant to the EU rose 17% over the first four months of the year, reaching 6.7 million tonnes. Between January and April, European terminals took in 91 cargoes — 98% of the plant's entire exports — bringing Russia nearly €3.88 billion.

But Europe's dependence on Yamal LNG goes well beyond purchasing the fuel. Despite public declarations about winding down their Russian operations, Western corporations continue to earn billions from the project and to supply the technology without which LNG production would be impossible.

In this investigation, Arctida reveals how the international group TotalEnergies extracted dividends and reaped considerable profits by reselling the gas, and how the supply chains for the imported components keep one of Russia's largest gas-extraction and liquefaction projects alive.

This article takes about 15 minutes to read. The first two sections show how TotalEnergies was profiting from Yamal LNG after 2022. The third covers the supply of Western equipment to the project. The fourth examines the sanctions exemptions that helped Yamal LNG's subsidiary keep its fleet and international logistics running — and the limits of that arrangement. The fifth lays out the key conclusions.

How billions ended up in the EU

“We have not received dividends from Yamal LNG since 2023,” the chief executive of France's TotalEnergies, Patrick Pouyanné, declared in April 2024. According to him, the profits from Russian assets were locked away in the country, out of reach.

By that point, the European group, which had for years been one of the key partners in the Yamal gas extraction and liquefaction project, had spent two years publicly distancing itself from its Russian business. Following the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, TotalEnergies condemned Russia’s actions, announced a gradual closure of its activities in the country, and halted financing for the major Arctic LNG 2 project.

The group nonetheless retained a 20.02% stake in Yamal LNG's share capital. Moreover, internal financial records of OAO Yamal LNG show that TotalEnergies continued to receive billions of roubles in dividends at least through the end of 2024.

In 2022, payments of 50.5 billion roubles from OAO Yamal LNG to TotalEnergies Treasury were recorded. In 2023, despite top management's claims that withdrawing dividends was impossible, the group received 43.1 billion roubles from the Yamal project. And in October 2024, a further tranche of 6.5 billion roubles.

Between 2022 and 2024, the French group received 105.2 billion roubles in dividends from Yamal LNG. Almost half of that was transferred to TotalEnergies after 2023.

According to documents obtained by Arctida, the payments passed through European banks that continued to work with Russia, in particular through Deutsche Bank AG's Dutch branch and Austria's Raiffeisen Bank International AG.

These operations not only generated income for TotalEnergies; they also contributed to Russia's federal budget. Alongside the transfers to Europe, OAO Yamal LNG dutifully remitted the profit tax on non-residents' dividends to the Federal Treasury. The payments were made at a comfortable 5% rate and ranged from 420 million to 1.2 billion roubles per tranche. In total, 3.6 billion roubles were paid into Russia's tax coffers.

Extraprofits under cover

Dividends, however, were not the only source of income for the French group from the Yamal project. Equally lucrative for TotalEnergies was a long-term offtake contract under which the company committed to buying four million tonnes of LNG every year through 2041.

The contract's distinctive feature is its pricing formation. Unlike newer deals pegged to European gas hubs, the TotalEnergies contract has historically been linked to oil quotes. That creates favourable conditions during gas crises. An illustrative example came in August 2022. Buying liquefied gas in Sabetta at predictable “oil” prices of roughly $12–15 per million BTU, the company sold it on the European market at extreme spot quotes that peaked above $90 per million BTU.

The corporation deliberately declined to hedge these deals, that is, to use the traditional financial mechanism whereby a future sale price is fixed in advance to guard against price swings. Because of sanctions risks, TotalEnergies chose to sell the gas at current, unconstrained market prices. At moments of peak demand, this allowed it to secure extra profits. Asked by journalists about the ethics of such trading amid global sanctions pressure on Russia, Pouyanné summed up the company's strategy:

“This is not Russian money — it's a European contract.”

That phrase captures the real business model exhaustively: the gas is physically extracted and liquefied in Yamal, but the bulk of the profit from its sale accrues in Europe, in the pockets of Western consumers.

The EU's new sanctions regimes, however, make this contract impossible. The 19th sanctions package set a deadline: from 1 January 2027, imports of Russian LNG into EU countries under long-term contracts will be banned. TotalEnergies' management had initially hoped to redirect these volumes to Asia or Turkey, but the European Commission prohibited EU firms from any trade in Russian LNG on the global market.

The 20th sanctions package, adopted in April 2026, resolved the issue by granting TotalEnergies legal protections against financial claims from Russian suppliers. As a result, in February 2026, Pouyanné announced that the contract might be terminated earlier. Yet, as TotalEnergies prepares to breach the trade agreement, the corporation plans to hold on to its 20% stake in Yamal LNG's share capital.

Grey imports for Yamal LNG

Western corporations are not only receiving financial gain from the project but also effectively enabling the extraction and liquefaction of the gas in the first place. The production complex runs on imported equipment that has not been replaced. Key stages of the plant's technological process depend on liquefaction technology from the American company Air Products, compressors from Germany's Siemens, and gas turbines from the American corporation Baker Hughes.

The Yamal LNG project itself is not under direct blocking sanctions. For a long time, European regulators avoided tough measures against the Russian gas industry altogether, given the EU's dependence on energy supplies. But from 2023 onward, sanctions policy gradually tightened: where the first restrictions mainly concerned dual-use goods, subsequent packages began to cut off access to virtually all high-tech components.

A number of multinational companies — Samsung Heavy Industries, GTT, Siemens, General Electric and Baker Hughes — had announced in 2022–2023 that they were voluntarily leaving Russia and leaving their supply chains. Yet Arctida's analysis of 2023 customs declarations shows that neither the public exit announcements nor the sanctions restrictions led to a complete halt in equipment shipments to Yamal LNG.

In 2023, for instance, the Italian companies ZA.VE.RO. SRL and Filters S.p.A. exploited legal loopholes in the early sanctions packages to ship directly from Europe to Yamal high-precision ball valves designed to operate at –162°C, along with seals made of fluorosilicone rubber that have no equivalent in Russia.

More on the legal loopholes

Other companies' equipment began arriving via third countries. The Spanish cooperative AMPO S.COOP, for instance, kept supplying Yamal with steel check valves and now uses the Turkish firm Aztek Enerji as a logistical and financial intermediary.

The Turkish company Uzay Group became an important supply channel. In 2023, American pressure-measurement sensors and vibration measurement amplifiers from PCB Piezotronics were purchased through the company for the plant, totalling roughly 17 million roubles.

Siemens products also continued to reach Yamal LNG through Uzay Group, despite the German group announcing its definitive exit from Russia in 2022.

Yet in 2023, the Yamal project took delivery of its latest operator panels and hundreds of programmable logic controllers (PLCs) needed to manage production processes.

Why using such PLCs and operator panels can be dangerous

According to Arctida's calculations, total purchases of Western equipment for Yamal LNG came to 3.5 billion roubles over 2023.

Fleet, hard currency and new sanctions

After the full-scale war began, Yamal LNG had to rebuild its international infrastructure, not only to supply precision equipment for production inside Russia but also to support the entire logistics chains. A key role here was played by the Singapore-based Yamal Trade, a wholly owned subsidiary of the project. According to Arctida, part of the export operations and settlements with the foreign contractors that provided the project's fleet passed through it.

One of Yamal Trade's main sources of hard-currency revenue was the export of gas condensate — a by-product of gas extraction. When the EU introduced the maritime oil embargo, European officials feared that a ban on exporting gas condensate would cause storage tanks on Yamal to overflow and halt the supply of the LNG that Europe so desperately needed. So, in December 2022, the EU Council adopted an amendment exempting gas condensate produced at LNG plants from the sanctions.

According to data obtained by Arctida, in 2023, some 53 large condensate cargoes were exported entirely legally. The main destination was the Netherlands, which received 538,517 tonnes — 65.2% of these shipments. The second-largest recipient was Singapore, which took 287,497 tonnes.

A full embargo on condensate will take effect on 1 January 2027, and until then, its sale continues to generate revenue.

That liquidity, accumulated in Yamal Trade's foreign accounts, enables execution of international contracts while bypassing Russian banks, whose transfers are blocked by compliance measures.

One line item among such international expenses is the supply of specialised gas carriers to Yamal LNG. According to customs data, Yamal Trade Pte. Ltd. took delivery of 43 vessels from South Korea between December 2020 and January 2025.

Such deliveries fell outside of sanctions restrictions. But in February 2024, South Korea extended its export controls to cover seagoing vessels. Nevertheless, the deliveries can still continue thanks to exemptions for previously signed contracts and the use of foreign shipping companies as intermediaries. The ships are built in South Korea, but their customers are international companies — for example, Greece's Dynagas or Japan's MOL.

Legally, the shipyard sells the vessel to a company in a NATO or Japanese jurisdiction; thereafter, an independent shipowner charters the carrier to Singapore's Yamal Trade on a long-term basis. Examples of this loophole are the contracts for the vessels Yenisei River and Lena River, which run through 2033–2034.

This shadow infrastructure, which relies on sanctions loopholes, has nonetheless proved sluggish and vulnerable to shocks. The first blow was a shift in global routes: after the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea in early 2024, logistics operators began redirecting tankers from the shortest route through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait around Africa. The longer voyages disrupted the turnaround schedule of Yamal's small fleet.

The crisis was deepened by the EU's 14th sanctions package, which banned the shipment of Russian gas at the Belgian port of Zeebrugge. Previously, tankers would transfer the fuel there onto conventional vessels and quickly return to the Arctic; now they are forced to make the long voyages themselves.

The logistic dead end was laid bare in the spring of 2026 during the Middle East crisis. When the conflict restricted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and forced Qatar to suspend loadings, European gas prices rose by more than 50%. Yamal LNG was only partially able to capitalise on this: amid the shortage, the project boosted its export volumes to the European Union. But due to logistical constraints, the plant was physically unable to redirect the fuel to the more lucrative Asian markets, missing the chance to maximise export revenue.

The EU's 20th sanctions package was the final constraint, introduced in the spring of 2026, and was accompanied by synchronous measures by South Korea barring the maintenance of Russian gas carriers at its shipyards.

Unlike small ball valves or sensors, repairs for complex marine engines are harder to arrange through grey imports and Turkish front companies. It requires certified dry docks and engineering expertise.

Revenues, loopholes and their limits

Arctida's investigation has shown that one of Russia's largest LNG projects continues to operate and generate profits for foreign shareholders such as TotalEnergies, in contrast to declarations to break the economic ties. This demonstrates both the character and the limits of the current sanctions regime: due to targeted EU regulatory exemptions and the routing of equipment through third countries, the involvement of Western technology and structures in the Arctic project endures.

At the same time, the latest rounds of restrictions aimed at banning gas shipments in Europe and denying servicing to the fleet expose the real vulnerabilities of the shadow scheme that has been built. While the shortfall in the components can be offset by grey-import tools, isolation from foreign ports and ship-repair infrastructure could complicate logistics, drive up costs, and physically narrow the markets available for Russian gas.

Cover photo: Novatek