Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. (042660) won an order valued at as much as $2.8 billion for nine ice-class vessels that will haul gas from the Yamal LNG project in Russia, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd. (9104) of Japan will buy and operate three of the ships, according to the four people, who asked not to be identified because the order hasn’t been announced.

The liquefied natural gas project is on an Ob River estuary, which is iced over for nine months of the year, according to the website of Total SA, one of the venture’s partners. OAO Novatek (NVTK), the Tarko-Sale, Russia-based company that’s the main partner in Yamal LNG, has said the venture plans to supply both Asian and European markets.

Daewoo Shipbuilding, the world’s second-largest ship builder, declined to comment in an e-mailed response. Mitsui OSK’s spokesman Atsushi Seki also declined to comment.

The latest order is in addition to a contract, valued at about $300 million, signed in March with Russia’s shipping company OAO Sovcomflot for one LNG ship for the Yamal project.

The project has contracted almost all of its planned output, and will sell the fuel to its three shareholders, as well as to Gazprom Marketing & Trading and Spain’s Gas Natural SDG SA. China National Petroleum Corp. is one of the three shareholders in Yamal LNG, which is scheduled to start exports in 2017.