Russian liquefied natural gas exporters shipped a record 3.42 million tonnes of fuel abroad in October 2026, according to preliminary industry tracking data.
The record monthly performance pushed total Russian shipments of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, to 28.65 million tonnes across the first ten months of the year. That represents an increase of 13.5 percent compared with the identical period a year earlier.
The figures were published by the Russian business newspaper Kommersant, citing preliminary cargo tracking figures from Kpler, a global energy data firm that monitors maritime vessel traffic.
Booming deliveries to Asian buyers
Rapidly expanding demand from China provided the primary momentum for the surge in export volumes during 2026. Chinese buyers took 8.8 million tonnes of Russian LNG between January and October, marking a 47 percent jump compared with the previous year.
Across Asia as a whole, deliveries reached 15.16 million tonnes during the ten-month period, up 15.8 percent from the prior year. Asian power utilities and industrial hubs have increasingly turned to seaborne super-chilled gas to fuel electricity generation and manufacturing plants.
LNG is natural gas cooled to minus 162 degrees Celsius, which condenses the vapour into a liquid and shrinks its volume by more than six hundred times. This transformation enables large insulated tankers to transport the fuel across open oceans without the need for fixed overland pipeline grids.
European purchases ahead of import ban
Shipments to European Union member states also climbed during the ten-month period, rising 6.5 percent to 12.87 million tonnes. However, the European share of overall Russian LNG exports fell from 47.8 percent to 44.9 percent as Asian markets absorbed a growing portion of total output.
Spain recorded the sharpest rise in consumption among European nations, lifting its imports of Russian LNG by 39 percent to 2.84 million tonnes. France remained the largest single buyer in Europe, taking 5.43 million tonnes over the ten months.
Earlier figures released by Bruegel, an independent economic think tank based in Brussels, showed that European imports of Russian LNG rose 10 percent during 2026, increasing from 15 billion cubic metres to 16.5 billion cubic metres.
Export facilities and alternative routes
The Yamal LNG terminal, located on the Arctic coast, remained the country's biggest exporting plant and operates without Western sanctions. The terminal shipped 16.23 million tonnes of LNG during the first ten months of 2026.
The Sakhalin-2 project, based on Sakhalin Island off the Russian Pacific coast, exported roughly eight million tonnes over the same stretch. Meanwhile, the Arctic LNG 2 project accounted for nearly four million tonnes, having commenced regular commercial export voyages only in August 2025.
Kommersant reported that the climb in foreign exports comes as the European Union prepares to enact an import ban on Russian-origin LNG, which is expected to take effect on January 1. With European buyers still taking slightly less than half of Russian shipments, exporters will need to redirect those volumes toward other destinations once the restrictions begin.
