Vice-President of PAO Sovcomflot Mikhail Suslin awarded with Naval Order of Merit
On 22 September 2016, the President of Russian Federation Vladimir Putin presented state awards and conferred honorary titles in the Kremlin to outstanding Russians: scientists; cultural figures; public officials and representatives of strategic sectors of the Russian economy. Amongst them were individuals including: business leaders; doctors; artists; athletes; transport workers; petro-chemists and people from the shipbuilding and engineering sectors.
Mikhail Suslin, Vice-President of PAO Sovcomflot, was awarded with a high state award – the Naval Order of Merit, Sovcomflot says in a press release.
Mikhail Ivanovich Suslin is one of the most skilled and distinguished employees of PAO Sovcomflot. He is responsible for the most important field of SCF Group’s work, without which it would be impossible to maintain a successful shipping company – namely navigational safety. Mikhail Suslin has been working in this sphere for more than 45 years. In 1968, he graduated from the Leningrad Maritime School in the specialty of marine navigation, and in 1979 he graduated from the Leningrad Higher Engineering Marine School named after Admiral S.O. Makarov.
From 1968, Mikhail Suslin worked at the Northern Shipping Company, and went all the way from third mate to the head of this important for shipping company. In 2000-2004 Mikhail Suslin was the head of the Department of transport security of The Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation. Then he was head of the Supervisory Authority for Maritime and River Transport, the Deputy Director of the Federal Service for Supervision of Transport. He was awarded a second-class medal of the Order of Merit for the Motherland, and was granted the titles of honor “Honoured worker of RF Transport” and “Honoured worker of Navy”.
Since 2008, he has been working for Sovcomflot. During this period, he successfully carried out a number of important projects that have brought distinction upon not only SCF Group but also contemporary Russian navigation. Foremost amongst them are projects involving fleet operations in the Russian Arctic and Sub-Arctic seas, the development of the potential of the Northern Sea Route, support for offshore oil-and-gas fields in harsh environmental and icy conditions, the efficient delivery of energy from the Barents, Pechora and Kara seas to the markets of Europe and Asia-Pacific Region. Mikhail Suslin was directly involved in the development of the project for the operation of Sovcomflot’s unique Arctic shuttle tankers, Mikhail Ulyanov and Kirill Lavrov, built at the Admiralty Shipyard facilities (Saint-Petersburg) for the Prirazlomnoye project. He developed operational tactics for these ships in Arctic seas conditions, checked and fine-tuned a model for safe loading and navigation, and has been actively involved in the training of tankers captains and crews, at Russian marine institutions of Higher Education and at Sovcomflot’s Training & Engineering Centre in St. Petersburg.
At the award ceremony in the Kremlin, Mikhail Suslin said: “I share the award with the Sovcomflot staff, with my colleagues from the companies and enterprises of the Russian marine transport sector who take part in major transport projects in high latitudes. Since I began my career in those far-off 1970s, as a junior ship’s officer serving the ship’s captain in the northern seas, I am very proud to see the real re-establishment of Russia in Arctic marine navigation today”.
“Just the other day, for the first time in navigational history, we began the year-round navigation from the Gulf of Ob serving the major industrial Novy Port project”, - mentioned Mikhail Suslin.
Sovcomflot congratulates Mikhail Suslin with all its heart. This high state award is a sign of recognition of the services and a great contribution of Mikhail Suslin to the development of national navigation.
PAO Sovcomflot (SCF Group) is one of the world's leading shipping companies, specialising in the transportation of crude oil, petroleum products, and liquefied gas, as well as servicing offshore upstream oil and gas installations and equipment. The Group’s fleet comprises 151 vessels with a total deadweight of over 13 million tonnes. The company is registered in St. Petersburg with offices in Moscow, Novorossiysk, Murmansk, Vladivostok, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, London, Limassol, and Dubai.
The Group offers a wide range of vessels in the market segments most demanded by major Russian oil and gas companies. With its own technical development and unique approach to advanced technologies, Sovcomflot has the ability to meet the most demanding customer requirements, providing effective transportation for oil & gas companies.