Blue Water Shipping signed a contract with Baku Shipyard covering the transport of two hull sections from Singapore to the newly established Baku Shipyard in Azerbaijan.
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Map from Blue Water. |
The two sections will form the hull of the Khankendi subsea construction vessel (SCV). Once completed, Khankendi will be deployed for the stage 2 development of the Shah Deniz field, which lies some 70km offshore in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea.
The hull sections will be transported on board a semisubmersible vessel from Singapore via the Suez to the Black Sea. Once the hull sections have been floated off, a series of tugs will take over and wet tow the hull sections through the Russian river system (Volga-Don) and its 18 locks.
Upon arrival to the Caspian Sea, ocean-going tugs will take over and make the final journey from Astrakhan to the place of delivery, Baku.
Each hull section has a length of 140m, a width of 16m and a height of 17m. The weight per section is 5400-tonne.
According to Blue Water, this transport will set a new record for the longest cargo ever to be transported via the Volga-Don. The previous record was set in 2007 when the company transported two similar sections each with a length of 133m.
President of the Azerbaijan Republic Ilham Aliyev inaugurated the Baku Shipyard in 2013. With a total of 1200m quay and a maximum depth of 7.5m, the shipyard can easily accommodate the vessels that today are operating inside the Caspian Sea. In addition, the shipyard has its own floating dock measuring 168 x 50m, which can accommodate vessels up to 23,000-tonne displacement.
“The transport will be executed by combined efforts from the Blue Water Shipping offices in Singapore, Moscow, Baku and Esbjerg (HQ). With the charter of a semisubmersible vessel for this project, Blue Water Singapore has chartered a total of 10 semisubmersible vessels within the last 24 months,” Jason Goh, Blue Water regional general manager in Asia Pacific said.
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