Arctic LNG in a Green Wrapper

Can Natural Gas Be Considered Eco-Friendly? A Case Study of Yamal LNG

A record-breaking heatwave in Europe continues to claim thousands of lives, while global temperatures are on the verge of breaching the critical 1.5°C threshold. Researchers emphasise that increasingly frequent and damaging extreme weather events are directly linked to greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels, and are calling for a phase-out of fossil-fuel-based energy.

Against the backdrop of the climate crisis and an increasingly climate-driven global energy market, Russia is ramping up liquefied natural gas (LNG) production to record levels. At the same time, Russian officials and producing companies are actively marketing it as a “green” fuel.

Using Yamal LNG as a case study, we examine how well this narrative holds up against reality. Read on to discover the project’s true carbon footprint, why a significant portion of its emissions never makes it into official corporate reporting, how Arctic LNG logistics operate, the environmental risks posed by potential tanker accidents, and whether any alternatives to fossil fuels exist in the Arctic.

Reading time: approx. 15 minutes.

• In the first section, we examine how Russian officials and the head of Novatek promote gas as a “green” fuel.
• In the second, we explain the climate damage caused by methane, the primary component of LNG.
• In the third, we assess Yamal LNG's emissions and demonstrate why corporate reporting does not always capture the full climate footprint of its products.
• Next, we look at the project's logistics and the emissions and environmental risks they create.
• The fifth section provides a detailed breakdown of LNG tanker accident risks.
• Finally, we conclude by exploring why the choice of RES is particularly critical for the Arctic.

How Gas Turned “Green”

Russia holds the world’s largest resource base, with one-fifth of global natural gas reserves. In 2024, Russian LNG production hit a historic high of 34.7 million tonnes, with the lion's share coming from Yamal LNG at 21.2 million tonnes. In 2025 alone, this single project generated $8.4 billion from European buyers.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov echoed this sentiment, asserting that Russia assigns natural gas a key role in the energy transition as the “cleanest of all hydrocarbons” and an “ideal transitional fuel.”

The corporate rhetoric of Novatek — the majority shareholder in the Yamal project — is aligned with the same narrative. Novatek CEO Leonid Mikhelson has repeatedly called LNG an environmentally clean fuel and argued that gas should play a key role in the “smooth transformation” of global energy and the replacement of more carbon-intensive fuels.

But is LNG truly environmentally friendly and climate-friendly?

The Hidden Side of LNG

Natural gas consists predominantly of methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases. Once released into the atmosphere, its warming impact over a 20-year timescale is more than 80 times greater than that of carbon dioxide. Although methane breaks down in the atmosphere much faster, it traps heat far more effectively. This is why cutting methane emissions is considered one of the fastest ways to take the immediate pressure off the climate.

Methane emissions are not limited to industrial processes. In the Arctic, for instance, the gas escapes due to permafrost thaw. Average temperatures in the region are rising three to four times faster than the global average, and this warming directly affects the depth of thawing soils and drives up methane emissions.

This creates a vicious cycle: the more greenhouse gases from human activity enter the atmosphere, the more the permafrost thaws, releasing additional greenhouse gases and destabilizing the infrastructure built upon it. This, in turn, can lead to industrial accidents. Some experts believe that permafrost thawing may have caused the 2020 accident at a Nornickel facility, which spilled more than 20,000 tonnes of oil products into the environment.

Therefore, comparing gas only to more carbon-intensive fuels—a favorite tactic of Russian officials and Novatek representatives—does not make it environmentally friendly. This line of reasoning artificially narrows the choice to different types of fossil fuels, whereas the energy transition aims not to swap one carbon-heavy resource for another, but to reduce dependence on them altogether. Over the past five years, solar and wind capacities have surpassed four terawatts, while the cost of electricity from RES has fallen to an all-time low among all energy sources.

It is no surprise that leading international climate coalitions, including Climate Action Network and Friends of the Earth, do not consider LNG a transition fuel. In their view, a genuine energy transformation must rely on renewable energy and energy efficiency improvements.

How Much Does Yamal LNG Emit?

According to Arctida's calculations, the climate footprint of Yamal LNG's output could exceed 50 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per year — if one takes into account not just the liquefaction process itself, but also the eventual combustion of the gas by end-users.

The climate impact of burning the gas produced annually by Yamal LNG is comparable to the annual emissions of entire countries — Sweden, Norway, or Portugal, for instance. To generate an equivalent climate footprint, an average Russian would need to live for more than four million years.

The 50-million-tonne figure, however, differs markedly from the picture presented in the project's own public reporting. Since 2022, Yamal LNG has published greenhouse gas emissions reports in line with international voluntary reporting standards. But these documents do not cover the full lifecycle of the product: emissions from the final stage — the use of the gas by consumers — are not included in the calculations.

Formally, this is not a violation. Voluntary reporting allows companies to define their own boundaries for emissions accounting. Yet the choice of these boundaries fundamentally alters the final figure. For fossil fuel producers, the bulk of the climate footprint often arises not during extraction or processing, but when the product is burned.

For extractive, carbon-intensive projects, voluntary emissions disclosure can function as a tool for fossil fuel climate-washing — a way to stay relevant in a market that is becoming increasingly climate-conscious. Yet global trends are leaving the fossil fuel industry with fewer and fewer avenues to claim environmental credibility: voluntary reporting is gradually becoming mandatory, and climate inaction and damage are already being framed within international law.

At the end of June, a Paris court ordered TotalEnergies, which holds a 20% stake in Yamal LNG, to update its duty of vigilance plan and include climate risks associated with emissions from the use of its oil and gas products by consumers. The court noted that this category accounts for around 90% of TotalEnergies' total carbon footprint and must be factored into the company's climate risk assessment.

The ruling sends a signal to multinational oil and gas corporations that they are accountable for all their emissions, including those generated through the use of their products, regardless of the buyer's location.

The Price of Arctic Logistics

LNG is shipped out of the port of Sabetta on Arc7 ice-class tankers. These vessels are custom-built to operate in northern seas, capable of navigating independently through first-year ice up to 2.1 meters thick. However, in certain sections of the Northern Sea Route (NSR), ice thickness can reach up to 3 meters depending on the season. Therefore, even for these specialized vessels, icebreaker escort along the NSR is recommended year-round, particularly during winter.

Icebreaker escorting a tanker along the Northern Sea Route

Source:KadnikovValerii / Depositphotos

The gas is then transferred to lighter, more conventional LNG carriers, which sail to buyers in open-water conditions. This transshipment scheme is partly driven by the high operating costs of specialised Arctic tankers. In turn, this process places an additional burden on the climate and the marine ecosystem, not only through fuel consumption but also due to noise pollution, which is particularly hazardous to cetaceans.

Prior to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and subsequent sanction restrictions, Arc7 tankers could sail to European ports for offloading and transshipment. Following the EU ban on transshipment operations for Russian cargoes, the key accessible location left for Yamal LNG has been the area near Kildin Island in the Barents Sea, close to the Kola Peninsula. There, LNG is transferred ship-to-ship onto conventional LNG carriers or vessels with a lower ice class. They then proceed to their final destinations — mostly in Europe, though a portion of the supply is directed to Asia.

To date, the bulk of Yamal LNG's exports has been oriented toward the European market. However, Russian officials have already announced plans to redirect supplies to “friendly” Asian countries amid the EU's planned phase-out of Russian gas.

If these volumes are indeed redirected to Asia, the logistics will become even more complex. Specialized tankers will have to cover greater distances along the Northern Sea Route, burning more diesel fuel and facing additional Arctic navigation risks.

An alternative would be to transship the cargo onto other LNG carriers and deliver it via the longer route through the Indian Ocean. However, this option also entails additional emissions, pollution, and risks to the marine environment.

What Are the Risks of an LNG Tanker Spill in the Arctic?

Accurately assessing the potential consequences of an accident involving LNG tankers is highly complex. The lack of major historical precedents with gas carriers means most available data relies heavily on predictive modeling.

“A common misconception is that LNG is inherently explosive. This is not true — the attack on the Arctic Metagas proved otherwise. One or two cargo tanks were breached; the cargo leaked and evaporated but did not explode. While an LNG explosion on a tanker is not impossible, it is extremely difficult to trigger — it requires a very specific set of conditions,” an environmental expert, speaking to Arctida on the condition of anonymity, explained.

According to the expert, for a tanker explosion to occur, the LNG must remain confined — for instance, fully sealed for transport — while being subjected to intense, continuous external heating for several dozen minutes. If such conditions are met, it could trigger a catastrophic explosion comparable in scale to a nuclear detonation.

An LNG tanker at the port of Sabetta

Source:KadnikovValerii / Depositphotos

However, a hull breach leading to depressurization and a cargo leak is a far more probable scenario. Beyond the direct release of massive volumes of methane straight into the atmosphere, depressurization temporarily generates a dense cryogenic cloud. Because LNG is stored onboard at approximately −160°C, this cloud devastates the surrounding ecosystem within its dispersion radius, depending on weather conditions.

A secondary, yet equally severe danger in a tanker accident is an oil spill. In addition to their LNG cargo, Arc7-class tankers are equipped with diesel fuel reserves, primarily used for navigating through Arctic ice. Depending on the route's length, a tanker can carry up to 3,000 tons of petroleum products.

Liquid fuel spills would be uniquely difficult to mitigate in the Arctic. The anonymous environmental expert pointed to the collision of the Volgoneft tankers in the Black Sea in December 2024, which spilled between 2,400 and 3,700 tons of fuel oil. Even in those highly accessible waters, the cleanup was effectively conducted from the shoreline rather than the open sea.

“What exactly can you clean up from the shore in the Arctic? And who is going to do it? Furthermore, heavy fuel oil spreads much slower than diesel. In other words, cleaning up petroleum spills in the Arctic is fundamentally impossible. This is especially true in the Russian Arctic, particularly if the accident occurs far from existing infrastructure, such as a port,”

Efforts to respond to an oil spill along the Northern Sea Route (NSR) are severely hampered not only by the sheer length of the route and the lack of emergency infrastructure but also by volatile, unpredictable ice and storm conditions, which are currently being exacerbated by the climate crisis.

Additionally, vessels frequently become beset by ice along the NSR, requiring icebreaker assistance to break free. In November 2021, a sudden deterioration in ice conditions left 18 vessels stranded simultaneously, including two Arc7 tankers servicing the Yamal LNG project.

Predictive modeling shows that on the transit route from Sabetta to Murmansk — a corridor regularly traversed by Yamal LNG tankers — the probability of a vessel encountering an accident due to ice compression stands at 2.3%.

The Climate Verdict on LNG

Russia is not only among the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases but also remains one of the primary sources of methane emissions. A significant portion of them is associated with uncontrolled emissions linked to fossil fuel extraction.

Comparing gas only to “dirtier” alternatives helps Russian officials and producing companies frame continued dependence on fossil fuels as part of the energy transition. This helps expand opportunities for exporting Russian energy resources in an increasingly climate-oriented energy market.

At the same time, today any fossil fuel loses when compared to renewable energy alternatives, if you look at the entire production and transportation lifecycle.

In 2024, 91% of newly installed renewables generated energy more cheaply than the fossil fuel plants with the cheapest kilowatt-hour of energy. And the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of wind power stations stand at roughly 11 grams of CO₂-equivalent per kilowatt-hour of electricity, compared to 300–900 grams of CO₂-equivalent for natural gas.

For the Arctic, this choice is particularly critical. The region is already facing the consequences of the climate crisis. The shrinking area of sea ice deprives polar bears and walruses of territories for raising offspring, rising average temperatures and the thawing of permafrost destroy the tundra ecosystem, intensifying fires destroy forests and disperse soot with hazardous impurities, and abnormal precipitation leads to large-scale flooding.

At the same time, the Arctic has the potential for less harmful energy solutions. Solar panels perform more efficiently in the cold, coastal zones with strong winds are well-suited for wind power, and a combination of different sources and storage systems can reduce remote territories' dependence on fossil fuel imports. This does not eliminate the complexities of the energy transition in northern regions, but it shows that the choice is not reduced to deciding which type of fossil fuel should be considered “less dirty.”

Cover photo by KadnikovValerii / Depositphotos

Authors:

Raya Levashova

Climate and Environment Analyst at Arсtida

Prepared in collaboration with:

Arctic Today