New shipyard for large-capacity facilities should be built in Russia – opinion

A new shipyard should be built in Russia for production of large-capacity facilities with at least 300,000 tonnes of metal works per year, IAA PortNews correspondent cites Felix Shamray, Director of Arctic Innovation Technologies Center, Saint-Petersburg State Marine Technical University (SMTU), as saying at the 11th International Forum “Arctic: Today and the Future”.

According to the speaker, Russia will need 100 gas carriers to fulfil the state task of shipping 122 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) per year by 2035. LNG tankers can be purchased abroad by draining $33 billion out of the national economy or have the ships built at domestic shipyards thus ensuring a $180 billion growth of RF GDP (taking into account the multiplicative effect from shipbuilding of 1:6). Unfortunately, Russian shipbuilding is not currently able to take on such a task, the expert believes.

To ensure shipping of major cargoes from Russia’s Arctic projects “100 gas carriers, about 50 oil tankers and about 10 dry cargo ships” are needed not taking into consideration auxiliary vessels, said Felix Shamray.

“Obviously, the capacity of SSC “Zvezda” is not sufficient. The shipyard is overloaded already, – emphasized Felix Shamray. – We are going to face the disruption of schedules due to this overloading. One more shipyard is needed, not for 300,000 tonnes but for 500,000 tonnes of metal works per year. It can and should be built in Russia”.

When speaking about the economic effect from implementing the new shipyard project the speaker specified the investments into the project estimated at $1.5 billion with a payback period of less than 5 years. Estimated economic effect for a shipyard: construction of 100 gas carriers ensures a revenue of $33 billion if profitability exceeds 10%. Estimated economic effect for ship owners: operation of 100 gas carriers ensures a revenue of over $3 bln /per year (in current freight rates). Estimated economic effect for the Russian Federation: over RUB 1.5 trillion of RF GDP per year.

The expert says that a new shipyard can be built either in the Far East or in the North-West region depending on different reasons. “The construction project operators could be Rosneft, NOVATEK, Rosatom. All those companies have a worth-while expertise that can be useful for construction of such a shipyard. …. In my opinion, the fleet can be operated by SCF, NOVATEK, Rosatom. There are appropriate locations for the construction, there are potential contractors, what should be built and what economic effect that brings is also clear. A political decision is needed since none of the corporations will undertake such an ambitious project. A political willpower is required”, said Felix Shamray.