Bukhta Sever, the Arctic oil terminal built for Rosneft’s massive Vostok Oil project, has sent out its first export cargo. Or is about to.
The shuttle tanker Valentin Pikul spent 84 days waiting beside the port’s only loading berth. Now full, it is preparing to head for China along the Northern Sea Route. A sister ship, the Akademik Gubkin, is on its way to the terminal.
The two 120,000-ton tankers were built in sections in South Korea to Samsung’s AST69K design. The sections were then shipped to the Zvezda yard in Russia’s Far East and welded together.
Rosneft says it will need at least 40 tankers to carry oil from Bukhta Sever, plus more than 10 support vessels, some of them ice-class. Most of this fleet exists only on paper.
The loading ceremony for the Valentin Pikul followed a familiar script. Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin reported another triumph to President Vladimir Putin, and the numbers grew more impressive as he spoke. Sechin even called the tankers Arc7 vessels, despite shipping registers identifying them as Arc6.
