# Russia Starts Vostok Oil Exports Through New Arctic Route

By John Kim

Canonical URL: https://www.tokenpost.com/news/business/23825
Published: 2026-09-24T16:34:07.000Z
Updated: 2026-09-24T16:34:07.000Z

Russia has started commercial crude exports from Rosneft’s Vostok Oil project, opening a new Arctic route that gives the country another channel for moving oil toward global markets.

The first shipment left the Bukhta Sever terminal on Sept. 6 aboard the Arc7 ice-class tanker Valentin Pikul. The terminal connects to the Northern Sea Route, which runs along Russia’s Arctic coast.

A 790-kilometer pipeline links the Vankor and Payakha fields with Bukhta Sever. The system has a design capacity of 100 million metric tons of crude per year, although the project remains well below Rosneft’s longer-term production ambitions.

Rosneft expects shipments to reach 30 million metric tons in the second half of 2027 and as much as 50 million metric tons by 2030. Vostok Oil is designed to move Arctic crude through northern infrastructure rather than relying solely on Russia’s Baltic and Black Sea export routes.

The project’s expansion will depend on continued field development, tanker availability and seasonal operation of the Northern Sea Route.