OREANDA-NEWS. November 25, 2009. SCF Group participated in the international exhibition “Transport of Russia 2009” which was held in Moscow from 19 - 21 November 2009, as part of a series of events, devoted to the 200th Anniversary of the national transport industry and higher education in the transport sector.

As a sponsor of the festivities arranged in Moscow, Sovcomflot presented its own exposition in the innovation zone of the exhibition. This showed that while holding the leading positions in a number of segments of the world tanker transportation market, during the current year the Group has successfully developed a range of new business projects.

Such projects include transportation of Russia’s liquefied natural gas within the Sakhalin-2 project; operation of supply vessels supporting the development platforms; regular seaborne transportation of coal from the Far-Eastern region of Russia to the Asian-Pacific countries; provision of port and tugging services. In September 2009 the Arctic shuttle tanker Timofey Guzhenko delivered the hundredth shipment of oil within the Varandey project – a unique system of seaborne transportation of hydrocarbons in the Arctic region. To date more than eight million tonnes of crude oil have been transported from the Varandey terminal by the tankers of Sovcomflot.

During the official opening ceremony of the exhibition, among many guests, the SCF Group’s stand was visited by Sergey Naryshkin, Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office and Sovcomflot Chairman; Sergey Ivanov, Deputy Chairman the Government; and Igor Levitin, Minister of Transport.

With the important guests present, a tripartite Agreement on dual class was signed by Novoship (a member of SCF Group), the American Bureau of Shipping and the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping. The Agreement envisages the involvement the experts of the Russian Register in classification and statutory surveys of the Suezmax tanker NS Burgas, which will allow the Russian specialists to obtain relevant experience in monitoring the operation of large tankers constructed abroad, as at the moment there are no capabilities to build such ships in Russia.