OREANDA-NEWS. February 26, 2010. The SCF Group’s fleet was expanded by the addition of a technologically advanced large Suezmax tanker, at a naming ceremony for the tanker named SCF Samotlor, which took place at Daewoo Marine Shipbuilding Engineering ship yard (Republic of Korea).

The ceremony was attended by Oleg Nam, TNK-BP Vice-President and the Director of OAO TNK-BP West Siberia branch, together with other representatives of SCF Group, TNK-BP and the Daewoo yard.

The tanker SCF Samotlor, 157,300 tonnes (dwt), has been designed for the transportation of crude oil. The ship’s Length Overall (LOA) is 274 metres, Breadth (Moulded) – 48 metres, Draft (Scantling) – 17 metres. The tanker fully meets all the national and international safety requirements of the Norwegian classification society Det Norske Veritas and may be operated worldwide.

This expansion of our Suezmaxes tanker fleet, which is in great demand both in the international and national markets, meets the the SCF Group development strategy, approved by the Board in December 2009. The strategy envisages, in particular, the progressive growth of the company’s share in this segment of the world tanker market.

Whilst the construction of such vessels at existing Russian yards is not yet possible, however, the appearance of new shipbuilding capacities in Russia’s Far East allows Sovcomflot to presume that by 2014 similar large tankers could be built in the Russian Federation. Taking into account the actual demand of Russian and international oil and gas companies, including TNK-BP, the development of technical and commercial parameters to construct a series of highly effective large tankers at the newly built shipbuilding facilities of the United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) in the Primorsky region has been already started. This is in accordance with the provisions of agreements signed in November 2009.

The new tanker has been named SCF Samotlor after Russia’s largest, and one of the world’s biggest, oil fields - Samotlor oil field being developed by OAO Samotlorneftegaz – a subsidiary of TNK-BP. Mrs. Valentina Efremova, a well-known veteran of the oil-production industry, became the “Godmother” of the ship. She has spent 30 years in a wide range of demanding roles within OAO Samotlorneftegaz, starting from an oil and gas production operator and becoming a highly qualified geologist.

“To have representatives of TNK-BP – one of our major clients – attending this ceremony, is a great honour to us, especially as we are actively developing cooperation between our two organisations. The assessment phase of a joint project for arranging the integrated transportation system for shipping oil products from Saratov Oil Refining Plant, including its transshipment and storage in the roads of the ports of the Black Sea, has been started ”, said Captain Vasily Dmitrov, the SCF Group’s representative. The above project provides for the construction of commercially effective sea and river vessels using Russia’s shipbuilding industry.

TNK-BP – is one of Russia’s leading oil companies, among the world’s ten major private oil companies by oil production volume. The company was established in 2003 as a result of a merger of oil and gas assets of BP in Russia and oil and gas assets of the Consortium of Alfa, Access / Renova (AAR). Production assets of the company are situated mainly situated in the Western Siberia (Hanty-Mansiysky and Yamalo-Nenetsky Autonomous Regions, Tyumen Region), in the Eastern Siberia (Irkutsk Region) and Volgo-Uralsky Region (Orenburg Region).

Samotlor Oil Field – Russia’s largest, and one of the world’s biggest, oil fields situated in the Hanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Region, 15 km from Nizhnevartovsk. According to the existing estimations, the geological reserves of the field amount to about 7.1 billion tonnes. More than 3.5 billion tonnes are recoverable. The current recoverable reserves are estimated as more than 1 billion tonnes. The area of the Samotlor Oil Field makes 1,752 sq. km.