Sanctioned Chinese heavy lift carrier on standby outside Norwegian Arctic coast
The Ya Qing Hai Yang, which is heavily involved in shipments to Russia’s banned Arctic LNG industry, is awaiting orders in a bay a few kilometres from the border with Norway.
For several days, the Ya Qing Hai Yang (IMO 1021570) has been drifting by the Aynov Islands, less than 30 km from Russia’s maritime border with Norway.
From Grense Jakobselv, the easternmost spot on the Norwegian mainland, it might be possible to catch a glimpse of the ship with a good pair of binoculars.
Judging from ship traffic data, the vessel, which was previously named Ocean 28, has sailed from Zhuhai, China.
The Ya Qing Hai Yang is one of the Chinese heavy lift carriers involved in shipments of industrial modules to Russia’s Arctic LNG 2, a natural gas project heavily sanctioned by the international community.
Together with its sister vessels Bright (IMO 9830769) and Glory (IMO 9934498), it has repeatedly sailed on the Northern Sea Route with deliveries from China to Utrenny, a terminal that serves the Arctic LNG 2 project, as well as to the Belokamenka LNG Construction Centre outside Murmansk.
In November 2024, the Ya Qing Hai Yang displayed a suspicious sailing pattern near a strategically important Norwegian gas plant. After almost two months at sea, it suddenly made a sharp U-turn and subsequently started to sail back and forth in the waters outside the island of Gossa, the site of the Nyhamna gas processing plant.
Both the Ya Qing Hai Yang and the Glory are new vessels. They were commissioned in 2022 and sailed under the Chinese flag until 2024. According to the Equasis ship information system, the former currently sails under a false Guatemalan flag, while the latter changed from a false Malian flag to the Russian flag on 1 July 2026.
All three heavy lift carriers have repeatedly changed their names, flag states, and ship managers since the start of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine.
Like the Arctic LNG 2 project, the three heavy lift carriers and their owners are on international sanctions lists. According to Open Sanctions, an open-source database of sanctions, the Ya Qing Hai Yang delivered large-scale power generation modules for the designated Arctic LNG 2 project in 2024.
It is not clear where the Ya Qing Hai Yang will sail following its stopover near the border with Norway. As with the sister vessels Bright and Glory, both AIS and satellite data appear to be deliberately distorted by the ship operators and Russian authorities.
