The offshore geophysical company Polarcus is getting a seismic vessel back early after Russian shipping player Sovcomflot (SCF) exercised an early redelivery option.
A press release from the marine geophysical company operating a fleet of seismic research vessels worldwide stated: "Polarcus Limited refers to its announcement dated 27 December 2018 describing options for the redelivery of "Vyacheslav Tikhonov", originally named "Polarcus Selma" including an option for the bareboat charterer of the vessel Sovcomflot (SCF) to redeliver the vessel on no less than 30 days' notice."
SCF has exercised its option and the Company currently expects the vessel to be redelivered towards the end of April, 2019 following completion of the combined streamer and node project offshore Dubai, it said.
With evident signs of market improvement, the Dubai-based company is in dialogue with customers on various projects and will explore opportunities for the vessel over the summer season.
Vyacheslav Tikhonov is the same class of vessel as POLARCUS SAMUR, an ultra-modern and Arctic-ready 3D seismic vessel of the ULSTEIN SX133 X-BOW design capable of towing both conventional and wide tow spreads. The vessel has an overall length of 84.2m and a beam of 17m.
Vyacheslav Tikhonov has a maximum speed of 17 knots and will be capable of deploying up to 8 streamers each of 6,000m length, or 6 streamers each of 8,000m length, with lateral streamer separations of between 25 and 200 meters.