President inspected Shtokman rigs
The two semi-submersible rigs for the Shtokman project are close to 100 percent completed, General Director of the Vyborg Shipyard Valery Levchenko told President Dmitry Medvedev during his visit to the yard last week.
The Vyborg yard is constructing the lower hulls of the two semisubmersible rigs, designed for the Shtokman project in the Barents Sea. The topsides of the rigs are being built by the Samsung Heavy Industries in Korea. It is Gazprom-subsidiary Gazflot which has ordered the rigs.
The rigs are now close to 100 percent completed, General Director Lechenko told the President. The yard previously reported that also the topsides are about to be completed.
Medvedev during the visit confirmed that the yard will get state support, a press release from the company reads. Currently, the Vyborg yard operates at only 50 percent of capacity and is in dire need of new contracts.
As reported previously by BarentsObserver, the three-year delay of the Shtokman project has spurred concern in the Russian shipbuilding industry. Also the Vyborg yard now fears that new expected construction orders will be postponed, newspaper Kommersant reports.
The Vyborg Shipyard and Gazflot LLC in 2007 concluded a contract on engineering and construction of the two semi-submersible drilling platforms for operations at Shtokman gas-condensate field. According to the contract conditions, the yard has to perform works on engineering and construction of two «turn-key» semi-submersible drilling units, the first unit will be delivered in 2010 and the second one — in 2011. The project of the platform MOSS CS-50 designed for operations in the conditions of the north seas was chosen as a basic design. The two rigs have been named the “Polyarnaya Zvezda” (Polar Star) and “Severnaya Siyanie” (Northern Lights)
