Arctech Helsinki Shipyards Oy (part of United Shipbuilding Corporation) held a keel laying ceremony on December 17 for a new icebreaking platform supply vessel ordered by PAO Sovcomflot under a long-term agreement with Sakhalin Energy, Sovcomflot says.
Originally signed in April 2014 following an international tender held by Sakhalin Energy, the agreement provides for the operation of one multifunctional icebreaking platform supply vessel (ice class Ice-15) and three ice class platform supply vessels for 20 years under the Sakhalin-2 Project.
The vessels are designed for year-round delivery of personnel, supplies and consumables to oil and gas production platforms in the Piltun-Astokhskoye and Lunskoye fields located in the Okhotsk Sea. In an emergency, the vessels will implement a full set of measures to protect the environment and provide safety support for the staff of the platforms.
Vyborg Shipyards (VS), where hull structures of the supply and support vessels are built, will act as subcontractor under the shipbuilding contract signed with Arctech Shipyards. This order will assure a high level of capacity utilization for the Russian enterprise until 2016.
Speaking at the keel laying ceremony, Evgeny Ambrosov, Senior Executive Vice President of PAO Sovcomflot, said:
“The construction of supply and support vessels for the Sakhalin-2 Project represents a continuation of our mutually beneficial partnership with United Shipbuilding Corporation, which specializes in building technically sophisticated vessels for servicing oil and gas fields on the continental shelf. The vessel currently under construction is an addition to a series of completed and successfully operating icebreaking supply vessels, modified in line with specific characteristics of the Sakhalin-2 project. We are proud to have earned the confidence of Sakhalin Energy, a company with which we have worked successfully on the Sakhalin-2 project for more than ten years.”
Technical specifications of the icebreaking supply vessel:
Deadweight (t): 3,000.00
Ice class - Ice 15
Length (m): 104.20
Width (m): 23.90
Loaded draft (m): 7.90
Operating speed (knots): 16.00
Sovcomflot Group (SCF) is Russia's largest shipping company and one of the world’s leading shipping companies in the field of maritime transport of hydrocarbons and services for offshore oil and gas exploration and production fields. Its own and chartered fleet, specializing in hydrocarbon transportation from regions with challenging icy conditions, includes 143 vessels with a combined deadweight of 12.5 million tons. A third of these vessels have a high ice class. Sovcomflot supports large energy projects in Russia and around the world: Sakhalin-1, Sakhalin-2, Varandey, Prirazlomnoye, Novoportovskoye, Yamal LNG, Tangguh (Indonesia), and Peregrino (Brazil). The company is headquartered in Saint Petersburg, with representative offices in Moscow, Novorossiysk, Murmansk, Vladivostok, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, London, Limassol, Madrid, Singapore and Dubai.
Sakhalin-2 is one of the world’s largest integrated oil and gas projects, under which a large-scale oil and gas infrastructure was built for the production, transport and processing of hydrocarbons. The project operator - Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Ltd. (Sakhalin Energy) - supplies the market with oil and natural gas produced on the northeast shelf of Sakhalin Island (Piltun-Astokhskoye oil field and Lunskoye gas field, Okhotsk Sea).
The project infrastructure includes three offshore ice-resistant platforms, the TransSakhalin pipeline system, consisting of 300 km of offshore pipelines and land-based oil and gas pipelines, measuring 800 km each, an onshore processing facility, an oil shipment terminal, and the first and only Russian plant producing liquefied natural gas (LNG).
As of 2009, LNG offshore transport from the Prigorodnoye Terminal (Aniva Bay) in the southern part of Sakhalin Island is provided by Sovcomflot’s LNG carriers - Grand Aniva and Grand Elena, each with a capacity of 145,000 cubic metres. The vessels transport LNG by sea mainly to Japan, South Korea and China. The oil and gas terminal in Prigorodnoye is operated by the Port of Prigorodnoye, a joint venture between Sovcomflot Group and Sakhalin Energy.
The transport of crude oil from the Sakhalin-2 project is carried out by three Aframax shuttle tankers with a high ice class - Aniva Bay, Sakhalin Island and Governor Farkhutdinov.
As part of a long-term contract with Sakhalin Energy, since 2009 the project involves Pacific Endurance, a specialized icebreaking supply serving drilling platforms.