Gazprom plans to order 12 new Arctic tankers by 2020, PortNews correspondent reported citing a Gazprom official statement at RAO / CIS Offshore 2013.
Deputy Chairman of the Board of OAO Gazprom Valery Golubev said that the "Vladivostok LNG" project will need up to 4 tankers. The 170,000-tonne tankers will be built to the South Korean green and fuel-saving design. The ice-class vessels will be able to sail independently in the Arctic seas without icebreaker assistance.
Some of these ships are expected to be built at a new shipbuilding complex "Zvezda", which is currently under construction in the Far East by a consortium of investors that includes among others the state-owned gas monopoly.
By 2018, the shipbuilding facility will build such a tanker. The rest vessels might be constructed by foreign shipbuilders or in cooperation with them.
The Gazprom official noted that due to insufficient shipbuilding capacities in the country, Russian offshore companies will fail to fulfill licensing requirements if they are focused exclusively on Russian shipyards.