The Zvezda shipyard in Russia’s Far East is to begin building vessels for Rosneft this year, with its first deliveries scheduled for 2019.
The yard is to build five “green” LNG-fuelled aframax tankers, each of 114,000 dwt, plus multipurpose replenishment ships with ice class, Rosneft said. The tankers will be used to export crude and oil products from Baltic ports.
Rosneft and the Far Eastern Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Center (FESRC) also signed contracts for two multi-purpose supply vessels with reinforced ice-class Icebreaker 7 notation, which will be delivered in late 2019 and early 2020.
Rosneft, Keppel FELS Limited, MH Wirth AS and the companies’ joint venture Antares also signed heads of agreements for offshore drilling units. The rigs will be designed by Zvezda-Keppel Design and Engineering Centre and built jointly by Keppel FELS and the Zvezda Shipbuilding complex in Russia’s Primorskiy region.
Separately, Rosneft and Exxon Neftegas Limited today signed a joint protocol to review the new shipyard’s technical capability and development plans, which could lead to Zvezda building tankers in the future to serve the Sakhalin-1 Project in the Sea of Okhotsk.
In signing the document, Rosneft said it intends to develop a manufacturing facility at Zvezda, which could be used for the repaid and maintenance of oil tankers currently serving the Sakhalin-1 project.
A new dry dock will be added to the shipyard in the future, equipped with a Goliath-type crane with a 900-tonne load capacity.
The Zvezda shipyard is being developed by a consortium comprising Rosneft, Rosneftegaz and Gazprom at the Far East Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Centre.
