OREANDA-NEWS. The first steel has been cut for the latest icebreaking platform supply vessel to be ordered by Sovcomflot under its long-term agreement with Sakhalin Energy. The ceremony took place on 26 November at the Vyborg Shipyard, which is part of the United Shipbuilding Corporation.

The agreement foresees the construction and operation over 20 years of a multifunctional ice-breaking supply vessel (ice class: Ice-15) and three more ice class vessels to work on the Sakhalin-2 project.

The ship has been designed for the year-round transportation of personnel, provisions and energy resources to and from the oil & gas production platforms in the Piltun-Astokhskoye and Lunskoye fields in the Sea of Okhotsk. In the event of an emergency it will be capable of implementing the complete spectrum of HSE measures.

The vessel will be built at Arctech Helsinki Shipyard Oy, also an enterprise of the United Shipbuilding Corporation, under a construction contract signed in April 2014. The subcontractor is Vyborg Shipyard, where the ship's hull structures will be built. All of the Russian enterprise's production facilities will be operating at full capacity until 2016.

At the steel cutting ceremony in Vyborg, Sovcomflot's Executive Vice-President Igor Tonkovidov noted: "This project reflects our latest partnership with the United Shipbuilding Corporation, which specialises in the construction of technologically advanced vessels to serve offshore oil & gas fields. Previous Sovcomflot projects to be implemented by the United Shipbuilding Corporation and Archtech include the icebreaking platform supply vessels "Vitus Bering" and "Aleksey Chirikov", which were successfully put into operation for Sakhalin-1. This latest ship is a continuation of this series, and has been modified to reflect the new requirements of Sakhalin Energy, the operator of the Sakhalin-2 project".