Energy Policy in the Arctic: Yamal LNG in Russian International and domestic political agenda

The past decade the Russian oil and gas industry has been marked by ambitious projects. The plant producing liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the Yamal peninsula became the first Russia’s project in the Arctic of such complexity and scale. Said to be a matter of strategic importance by the Russian government, it fits well into its larger perspective of the development of the Arctic and the Northern Sea Route. However, it became evident that it would be impossible to implement Yamal LNG without the support of either European or Asian stakeholders – it heavily relies on foreign technology and funding. Especially after the 2014 Western sanctions, the project’s attention pivoted to the East: it was able to secure the missing funding and launch the production. The paper outlines the characteristics of the project, analyses its role in the international and domestic political agenda in Russia, and suggests that even though the hydrocarbons exploitation in the Arctic and LNG projects play an important role in regards to the wider international agenda of Russia’s Arctic policy, Yamal LNG had a bigger impact on the domestic politics and internal natural gas market than on the country’s external energy relations.