PAO Sovcomflot lays keel for new supply vessel

Arctech Helsinki Shipyards Oy (part of United Shipbuilding Corp.) has announced that it recently held a keel laying ceremony for a new icebreaking platform supply vessel ordered by PAO Sovcomflot under a long-term agreement with Sakhalin Energy.  

The original agreement provides for the operation of a multifunctional icebreaking platform supply vessel (ice class Ice-15) and three ice class platform supply vessels for 20 years under the Sakhalin-2 project.

Sakhalin-2 is one of the world’s largest integrated, export-oriented oil and gas projects, and Russia’s first offshore gas project. Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Ltd., the project operator, is owned by Gazprom, Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi. The project infrastructure includes three offshore platforms, an onshore processing facility, 300 km of offshore pipelines and 1600 km of onshore pipelines, an oil export terminal and a LNG plant.

The icebreaking platform supply vessel and ice class platform supply 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 platform staff.

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 ensure a high level of capacity utilisation for the Russian enterprise until 2016.

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 Corp., which specialises in building technically sophisticated vessels f or 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 10 years.”

Edited from press release by Callum O'Reilly

Read the article online at: https://www.lngindustry.com/liquid-natural-gas/22122015/pao-sovcomflot-lays-keel-for-new-supply-vessel-1805/