New icebreakers, platforms and tankers for Russia
The Russian government plans a massive development of new civil vessels and offshore oil installations. To achieve that, several new federal shipyards need to be built.
Minister of Industry and Trade Viktor Khristenko believes the powerful Russian shipbuilding industry should concentrate on the construction of civil vessels. He now wants the establishment several new federal shipyards. Icebreakers and specialized vessels, offshore platforms, research vessels, floating nuclear power plants and tankers should be the prime objective of the Russian shipbuilders, Mr. Khristenko argues.
Not competitive
In last Wednesday’s “government hour” in the Federation Council, Minister Khristenko said that Russian shipbuilding industry does not stand the competition with the shipyards of South Korea, Japan and China on the market of commercial vessels. The reasons are technological gap, expensive labor and difficulties of crediting, he maintained.
Nevertheless, the industry demonstrated rather good results last year with 30 percent production growth and over 150 billion RUB of sales turnover. However, about 70 percent of production was military orders and stipulated by the state defense budget.
The Russian shipbuilding industry employs over 160,000 specialists working in168 plants. Most of the plants are placed in the Northwestern part of the country
New shipyards
According to the long-term federal strategy on shipbuilding developments adopted two years ago, three new federal shipyards are to be built in the country: one in the west, one in the south and one in the Far East.
Next year, the Ministry plans to start the construction of the new shipyards. According to Mr. Khristenko, six-seven projects have so far been picked for a tender and two-three of them will be approved for state investments. Among them, the yards with the best chances are likely to be the “Severnaya Verf” (St. Petersburg), Vyborgsky Shipyard (Vyborg) and a joint project of the Sevmash and Zvezdochka shipyards (Severodvinsk).
The “Severnaya Verf” project includes the construction of a world class shipyard for the construction of icebreakers, LNG carriers, offshore drilling platforms and all types of military ships including aircraft carriers. The main beneficiary of “Severnaya Verf” is United Industrial Corporation (OPK) which also controls “Baltijsky Zavod” (St. Petersburg). In the new project the OPK is going to cooperate with Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering.
The “Vyborgsky Shipyard” plans to construct a new plant, which will be able to produce LNG carriers (two vessels per year) and deep-sea semi-submersible floating and production platforms (three platforms per year). The shipyard is controlled by the structures of the “Rossija” bank.
The project of Sevmash/Zvezdochka is partly oriented on the production of military character but its main goal is still to construct new facilities for production of oil tankers of 100,000 deadweight tonnage and LNG carriers of 125,000 cubic meters capacity.
The cost of each project varies from 15 to 33 billion RUB. The most expensive is the Severodvinsk project with a price tag of 33,5 billion RUB of which 25 billion will have to be state investments.
BarentsObserver Arkhangelsk
The arcticle is based on information from www.gudok.ru, www.vyborgshipyard.ru, www.opk.ru, www.morskayakollegia.ru
