Blue Water, Baku Shipyard ink contract

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. 



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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