Goals become distant
Sanctions are setting Putin’s economy back by years
12/25/2025 – 5:03 p.mReading time: 1 min.
Sanctions are drastically hampering Russia’s ambitious LNG production goals. Moscow’s global market strategy is stalling considerably.
Russia is postponing its target for liquefied natural gas (LNG) production by several years, citing Western sanctions. The plan was to reach 100 million tons per year, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Nowak told the Rossiya-24 broadcaster on Thursday. “It is clear that this will now be pushed back by several years due to the sanctions-related restrictions.” He did not give any details. Russia’s plans to increase its share of the global LNG market by 2030-2035
from the current eight to 20 percent is made more difficult by the sanctions imposed because of the war in Ukraine.
Russian LNG production was 34.7 million tons in 2024, below the expected 35.2 million. Russia’s problems in expanding LNG production are evident in the implementation of the Arctic LNG 2 project. Although this started work in December 2023, it was only able to deliver the first cargo to China in August of this year. There are also delays at Murmansk LNG, which is set to become Russia’s largest LNG plant with a planned annual production of 20.4 million tons. The EU wants to ban the import of Russian LNG from January 1, 2027. There is also fierce competition from the US, which is expanding its sales in Europe, and from Qatar, which dominates the Asian market.
