‘Shipbuilder Damen refurbishes ships that transport Russian gas’

This article was last updated on October 24, 2024

Canada: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
USA: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…

‘Shipbuilder Damen refurbishes ships that transport Russian gas’

Shipbuilder Damen has refurbished several ships in recent months that keep LNG exports from Russia going. This is what the French journalistic website writes Disclose.

Until a few days ago, Samen worked on maintenance of the LNG Merak at the shipyard in the French city of Brest. That LNG tanker was delivered in 2019 purpose built to collect LNG in Sabetta, Northern Russia. Nine similar ships have also called at the yard since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the French journalists write.

Gray area

The trade in liquefied gas is an important source of income for Russia. While the import of Russian gas via pipelines into the EU decreased due to the sanctions, that of liquefied gas increased. This was possible because LNG was outside the sanctions for a long time.

It is now prohibited to transit liquefied gas from Russia through a European port. With this, the EU hopes to hit Russia financially, so that the country can invest less money in the war against Ukraine.

“But whether refurbishing these types of ships is allowed is a gray area,” says sanctions lawyer Yvo Amar. All kinds of ship parts are on the sanctions list. “You are not allowed to supply them to customers if they are mainly going to use them in Russia.”

Damen must therefore pay close attention to whether the parts they replace on the LNG tankers are on the sanctions list, says Amar. “So there are certainly risks for the company when they do business with these types of ships.”

The company tells NOS that it strictly adheres to European sanctions against Russia. The company also says that it is in no way involved in the operation and cargoes of the ships in question.

Russian trade

Russia was an interesting region for Damen for many years. The construction of new ports in the north of the country created a high demand for tugboats. Two days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a Damen director said at a conference that the company had built 36 ships in Russia in the previous years.

The sanctions that followed put an end to that trade. As a result, Damen was unable to carry out several orders and had to sell those orders on to other shipbuilders.

In its last annual report, the company wrote that it had a loan of 90 million euros outstanding in 2023 to “bridging the impact of the Russia/Ukraine crisis”.