YEKATERINBURG, June 9. /TASS/. An Antonov An-124 Ruslan delivered from Germany 76 tonnes of cargo to the Sabetta northernmost airport in Russia on the Kara Sea (Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District) for construction of the Yamal LNG plant, press service of the regional customs said on Friday.

According to the customs, during the current year, the service has cleared in Sabetta 31 arrivals of international flights from France, Germany, Belgium, Singapore, Chine, Scotland and South Korea.

"Compare with the previous year: we cleared eleven international flights then," the customs’ press service said. "The big growth of international flights to Sabetta is related to the plans to put operational the LNG plant’s first lime in this year’s fourth quarter already."

TASS reported earlier, that in early March the airport received for the first time the biggest Antonov An-124 Ruslan aircraft with cargo from China. The aircraft delivered components for construction of the huge Yamal LNG plant - the cargo’s weight was 67.67 tonnes.

Airport in the Extreme North

The Sabetta airport is Russia’s northernmost airport and a biggest northern airport in the world. It has the status of a strategic facility for implementation of the large project on construction of a liquefied natural gas plant in Yamal. In December, 2014, Sabetta served the first passenger flight which landed there on a technical flight. It was a Boeing-737 of the UTair Company. From February 2015, the airport is serving the flights which carry shits for construction of the Yamal LNG project. The first international flight from Beijing with passengers on board was made on March 4, 2016.

Yamal LNG project

The Yamal LNG Company is constructing a plant for production of liquefied natural gas with the annual capacity of 16.5 million tonnes at the resource base of the Yuzhno-Tambeiskoye field. The Yamal LNG plant is planned to go operational in 2017. The project’s cost is 27 billion dollars. Practically all the future output - 96% of LNG to be produced at the plant - has been contracted already.

Shareholders of Yamal LNG are: Novatek (50.1%), Total (20%), CNPC (20%) and the Silk Road Fund (9.9%).