24 | ICE-CLASS VESSELS AND TECHNOLOGY
Essential ice-breakers bring oil from the Arctic Two new powerful ice-breaking supply vessels, owned by Gazprom Neft, are playing a critical role in the logistics of transporting crude oil from fields above the Arctic Circle
The Umba floating storage and offloading terminal in Kola Bay (source: Gazprom Neft)
T
he development of the Novoportovskoye field on the Yamal Peninsula in the Arctic Circle is a key part of Russian oil producer Gazprom Neft’s strategic plans. In 2018, 9.9M tonnes of oil equivalents were produced at the Arctic field – a 40% increase over the previous year.
Offshore Support Journal | March 2019
Getting the oil from the field to European consumers has some complex operational and technical challenges though. Oil produced at the field is sent via a 100 km pipeline to the Arctic Gates terminal. Six specially designed Arc7 ice-class shuttle tankers load oil via a single-point mooring system at the terminal, which is an 80-m tall structure
about 3 km offshore in the Gulf of Ob. Once the oil is loaded to the Shturman-series ice-class shuttle tankers, it is transported to Murmansk via the Northern Sea route for shipment to the Umba floating storage and offloading vessel moored in Kola Bay. The Umba is a permanently moored VLCC with a total cargo capacity
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