Russia’s Vyborg Shipyard has seen a ceremony to mark the start of construction on the first of two semi-submersible platforms which will be built to serve the Barents Sea Shtokman project.
The keel laying ceremony for the semi-submersible floating drilling rig – dubbed SSFDR – took place watched by a delegation from Gazflot, the Gazprom subsidiary responsible for the Shtokman development and the shipyard’s management as initial work got underway on one of the six-column semi-submersible platforms which are being build to a Moss Maritime CS 50 design.
Gazflot signed a contract with Vyborg in November last year for construction of the two platforms which will be equipped to accommodate up to 128 personnel in harsh environments.
The first unit is due for completion in the fourth quarter of 2010, and the second by the first quarter 2011.
Both units are designed to cope with up to 70 cm thick ice, external temperatures of minus 30 ° Centigrade, and will be capable of operating in water depths up to 500m (1,640 ft) and drilling to a depth of 7,500 m (24,600 ft).
Among those at the ceremony were Alexander Ananenkov, deputy chairman of Gazprom, Yuri Shamalov, general director of Gazflot, the governor of the Leningrad region, Valery Serdyukov Pavlovich, plus the chairman of the Vyborg Shipyard Poryadin Alexandrovich, and Valery Levchenko, general director of Vyborg.
“Today we took another important step towards developing the Russian Arctic shelf resources and shaping a new oil and gas production centre there,” Shamalov declared, according to reports.