The tanker, loaded with 16,000 tonnes of oil from the Novoportovskoye field, left the terminal escorted by a nuclear icebreaker.

The tanker will arrive in Europe in early March. Until the end of the current winter season in May, Gazprom Neft plans to ship over 50,000 tonnes of hydrocarbons along the Northern Sea Route.

Gazprom Neft tankers will receive support from Atomflot icebreakers.

Novoportovskoye produces a new grade of oil - Novy Port - a light crude with 0.1% sulfur content, lower than both Urals and Brent.

Novoportovskoye, one of the biggest oil and gas condensate fields on Yamal, is located far from the pipeline network. Shipment by sea around Cape Kamenny is the optimal method for moving crude from the field to market. A nuclear-powered icebreaker made the first winter passage from the port of Sabetta on the northeastern coast of Yamal to Cape Kamenny in 2011, demonstrating that oil could be supplied to the market by tanker in winter.

Oil is delivered from the field to the coast on 100-kilometer pipeline with capacity to ship 600,000 tonnes a year. Infrastructure created at the field and on the shore of the Gulf of Ob made it possible to transship Novy Port oil for the first time in the summer of 2014. In January, the company began work on a second oil pipeline, which will have capacity to ship5.5 million tonnes of oil a year. Following planned upgrades to pipeline capacity and completion of the oil terminal, oil will be shipped to market by sea year-round.

Full-scale development of Novoportovskoye is slated to begin in 2016.

The field has more than 250 million tonnes of C1+C2 recoverable oil and gas condensate reserves and over 320 billion cubic meters of gas reserves (including Paleozoic strata).

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