OREANDA-NEWS. November 16, 2011. The LUKOIL's Varandey fixed offshore ice resistant oil terminal (FOIROT) has been registered in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s most northerly continuously operating oil terminal, namely, 69 degrees 03 minutes 11 seconds of the northern latitude.

The FOIROT is assembled at a 17-meter depth in the Barents Sea located 22 km off the coast of the Nenets Autonomous District. It is more than 50 meters tall and has a total weight of over 11,000 tons, which includes a substructure with living quarters, a mooring cargo handling system (MCHS) with a jib and a helicopter platform. 

The FOIROT is connected to two underwater pipelines, 820 mm. in diameter, to pump the oil from the onshore tank battery with a capacity of 325,000 cu.m. The FOIROT was constructed by OOO LUKOIL-Kaliningradmorneft steelworks, a fabrication facility for metal structures used in construction. The FOIROT capacity totals 12 million tons of oil per year. Its first oil was exported on June 9, 2008. As of October 28, 2011, 20.4 million tons of oil had been loaded onto 295 tankers.