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Two shipowners are due to ink LNG carrier newbuilding orders worth just shy of $3bn for Russia’s Yamal LNG project in South Korea on Tuesday.

Teekay is expected to sign up for six 170,000-cbm Arc7 vessels and Mitsui OSK Lines (MOL), working in partnership with China Shipping LNG, will book three. The ships, which are part of a massive 16-strong order costing just over $5bn, are said to be priced at around $316m apiece, giving a combined value of $2.8bn.

TradeWinds understands a signing ceremony will be held at a Seoul hotel together with Yamal shareholders and Korean shipbuilder DSME.

Leonid Mikhelson, chairman of the project’s lead shareholder, Novatek, is expected to attend.

But, as TradeWinds went to press, shipowner SCF Group (Sovcomflot) was not expected to be on hand to ink the remaining six contracts it has been earmarked for.

Industry watchers link the delay in SCF’s signings to Russian president Vladimir Putin’s recent comments that the orders for the Yamal ships should go to Russian, not foreign, yards.

Last month, Putin pressured Mikhelson directly during a meeting to look at Russian yards. The Novatek boss said to the president that domestic facilities do not have the capacity to build LNG carriers at present but added that his company is now working with Russia’s United Shipbuilding Corp on the orders.

SCF was the first to get the ball rolling on the huge haul of specialised vessels required for Yamal LNG. The company signed the shipbuilding contract with DSME on the first project vessel in February. Yamal shareholders were keen to have this first ship delivered to the new export port of Sabetta in the Kara Sea by 2016, in time to undergo ice trials in the year preceding the planned start-up.

Slots for all 16 ships had been reserved with DSME last year and SCF had been expected to be the first back to the table to ink the second and third units.

In March, SCF, Teekay and MOL signed a letter of intent (LOI) in Korea covering the remaining 15 ships. The intention was that the contracts would be firmed up by mid-April.

But this started to slide as owners battled to get their financiers comfortable with the project in light of heightened political tensions between Russia and Ukraine — and now it is Teekay and MOL that will confirm their newbuilds.

The Yamal shareholders — Russia’s Novatek (60%), Total (20%) and CNPC (20%) — plan to use the Arc7 specialised icebreaking LNG carriers to ship out the 16.5 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) the project is planned to produce from its three trains. The vessels are understood to be fixed against 26-year time charters from the Russian project.

The project’s first commercial cargo is due to be shipped in 2017, with a train to start up in each subsequent year. Cargoes will be sent via the Northern Sea Route (NSR) to Dalian in China and beyond while the passage is navigable.

When it is not, Yamal plans to ship cargoes west on the specialised tonnage and then tranship the volumes onto conventional vessels in Northern Europe. This will require a further slew of LNG carriers to lift these shipments, project officials say, some of which are expected to be built in China.