ST. PETERSBURG, January 25 (RIA Novosti) – Russia's United Shipbuilding Corporation is to build at least four Arctic class LNG carriers for the Pechora liquefied natural gas project in northern Russia, its developer, the Alltech group, said on Friday.

“We are in talks with Russia’s United Shipbuilding Corporation and we have signed several preliminary agreements on the issue…We are talking about four ships with a deadweight of about 170,000 metric tons each,” Alltech President Dmitry Bosov said.

The Pechora project includes development of the Kumzhinskoye and Korovinskoye fields in the Nenets Autonomous District, with construction of an LNG production plant, a gas treatment plant, and logistics infrastructure.

According to Alltech, the LNG plant will be launched in the fourth quarter of 2018 if the design phase goes ahead in the first quarter of 2013.

Capital investment in the project is estimated at $4.5 billion-$12 billion depending on output, which could range from 2.6 to 8 million metric tons per year.