OREANDA-NEWS.  August 18, 2014. As part of a working visit to the North-western Federal District, Chairman of the State Duma Sergey Naryshkin attended Sovcomflot Group’s head office in Saint-Petersburg.

Sovcomflot President Sergey Frank told the speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament about the current strategy and its implementation at Russia’s leading shipping company.

During Mr Naryshkin’s visit to SCF headquarters on the River Moika embankment, Sergey Frank told him about Sovcomflot’s most important achievements in recent years; including the export of the first consignment of crude oil from the Prirazlomnaya platform in April 2014 – Russia’s first offshore energy project on the Arctic shelf. Mr Naryshkin was shown a training simulation of a Sovcomflot Arctic shuttle tanker (Mikhail Ulyanov series) approaching a platform in the icy conditions of the Barets Sea.

This complex maritime operation was reconstructed using a state-of-the-art simulator at the SCF Training & Engineering Centre. In addition, Sergey Frank presented several promising construction projects being conducted by experts from the SCF engineering centre. These include: the construction of Arctic LNG carriers designed to transport liquefied natural gas as part of the Yamal LNG project (to be participated by Sovcomflot and two large overseas shipping consortiums), the construction of multi-functional icebreaking supply vessels for platform operations on the Sakhalin-II project, as well as a project to build shuttle tankers designed to work in the challenging climatic conditions of the Arctic and sub-Arctic seas.

SCF Training & Engineering Centre is based at Sovcomflot headquarters in Saint-Petersburg. This historic building on the River Moika embankment is also home to Sovcomflot subsidiary OOO SCF Arctic, which was founded in 2012 to conduct SCF Group projects in the Arctic region and today operates SCF vessels registered in Russia.

At the end of his official visit, Sergey Naryshkin presented General Director of SCF Arctic Vladimir Domnyshev with a Russian State Award.

Sergey Yevgenyevich Naryshkin has been a member of the board of directors at Sovcomflot since 2004 and was Chairman of the Board between July 2008 and November 2011. In September 2011, the company’s board of directors approved a framework document outlining the OAO Sovcomflot development strategy for the period until 2017. The need for a new company strategy was dictated by the discovery of new investment opportunities associated with the development of projects on the Russian continental shelf. Sovcomflot has since been handed the difficult task of breaking into the new high-tech market segments in highest demand from Russian oil & gas companies while, at the same time, maintaining its leading positions in traditional areas of shipping. The new SCF strategy is centred around an industrial business-model of development and the provision of end-to-end logistics solutions for large offshore energy projects. This approach is intended to consolidate Sovcomflot’s leading positions and ensure consistent financial results regardless of fluctuations on the market.