ANALYSIS • YAMAL LNG
LNG comes in from the cold PHOTO: SOVCOMFLOT
Amid great ceremony, the world’s first ice-breaking LNG tanker belonging to Sovcomflot (SCF) made her debut call at the new gas terminal at Sabetta Port on the Yamal Peninsula in Russia at end-March.
The 172,600cu mtr Christophe de Margarie is the first of 15 ice-class Liquefied Natural Gas carriers designed specially to serve the Yamal LNG project in the Russian Arctic, where access to Sabetta port is hampered by difficult ice conditions in the Ob Bay and Kara Sea for up to nine months a year.
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a video address to assembled dignitaries in Sabetta (pictured). He began by paying tribute to the vessel’s namesake – the late head of French oil giant Total and ‘great friend’ of Russia, who died tragically in a Moscow plane accident in 2014 – before describing the docking of the ice-class tanker and whole $1.9bn construction from scratch of the new port as ’a big event in Arctic development.’
The new vessels will carry Arc7 notation – the highest ice class amongst existing merchant vessels – and be able to sail along the Northern Sea Route (NSR) westward from Sabetta all- the-year-round and
eastward for six months of the year (from July to December), versus previous NSR transits only possible over four summer months and then with ice- breaker support.
The maiden call at Sabetta also marks the culmination of a 10-year collaborative effort between Sovcomflot, Russian gas producer Novatek and Yamal LNG, which has included several trial voyages along the NSR.
‘Together, we have proven that using high-latitude routes as a transport corridor, for large-capacity vessels, is not only technically possible but also economically feasible,’ said SCF president and ceo Sergey Frank. ‘These results have laid the foundation for the successful implementation of the Yamal LNG project, which would
have been impossible without an efficient and safe logistics scheme to transport LNG by sea.’
Novatek chairman and ceo Leonid Mikhelson stated that the Yamal project would be able to ‘produce more than 70m tonnes of LNG and create a hub with a more than a 15% share in the world market in terms of its cost.’ The new port infrastructure would help implement that goal ‘in the shortest possible time,’ he added.
The new 299mtr long tankers – dubbed ‘Yamalmax’ class – are each equipped with a 45mW propulsion system comprising three giant Azipod propellers supplied by ABB, which provides a very high degree of manoeuvrability and allows the ships to sail independently (stern first) through ice up to 2.1mtr thick. Along with traditional fuels the vessels can use boil off of their LNG cargoes in order to reduce emissions – sulphur oxides (SOx) by 90%, nitrogen oxides (NOx) by 80% and carbon dioxide (CO2) by 15%.
PHOTO: SOVCOMFLOT
Sabetta inaugural call line-up (l to r): Sergey Frank, SCF president & ceo; Maxim Sokolov, Russia’s Minister of Transport; vessel master Sergey Zybko; Leonid Mikhelson, Novatek chairman & ceo; Alexey Texler, Russia’s first deputy Minister of Energy; Patrick Pouyanné, Total chairman & ceo; and Li Fanzhun, deputy head of State Energy Administration of China
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Separately, Sovcomflot is working with Shell on developing LNG-powered Aframax tankers, and says it believes the future of the tanker industry belongs to LNG-fuelled vessels.
Seatrade Maritime Review • Quarterly Issue 2 • June 2017 19
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