On September 3, a ceremony was held at Spanish shipyard Factorias Vulkano S.A. on delivery of a 30,000-dwt tanker of strengthened ice-class built for Rosneft. The vessel named RN Arkhangelsk was designed for operation in Arctic waters with ice thickness exceeding one meter. Its operation will start in October of the current year, Rosneft information department reports.
The length of RN Arkhangelsk is 176 m, breadth — 30 m. The tanker is capable of carrying 25,000 tones of oil. Throughout a year it may deliver over 1.2 million tonnes to Belokamenka transshipment complex. It is the first vessel built within the framework of Rosneft program on creation of its own tanker fleet. By 2009 it is to get two more similar vessels.
Oil company Rosneft is Russia's leader among vertically integrated oil companies operating at the shelf of the RF including regions with severe ice conditions. The necessity to acquire a chemical carrier of such a class became obvious with implementation of a unique way of oil transportation in the North-West region of the Russian Federation: storage tanker Belokamenka was placed near Murmansk as the last point in the company’s supply chain for oil export from Timano-Pechersk oil-and-gas field.