Joint Leadership Meeting, Russian Shipbuilders

Led by Alexander Ananenkov, Deputy Chairman of Gazprom Management Committee, the company’s delegation continues its business trip to Saint Petersburg.

The delegation is composed of Oleg Aksyutin, Member of the Management Committee – Head of the Gas Transportation, Underground Storage and Utilization Department, Yaroslav Golko, Member of the Management Committee – Head of the Investment and Construction Department, Vasily Podyuk, Member of the Management Committee – Head of the Gas, Gas Condensate and Oil Production Department, as well as heads and specialists from Gazprom specialized subdivisions and subsidiary companies – Gazprom VNIIGAZ, VNIPIgazdobycha, Giprospetsgaz, Gazprom transgaz Saint Petersburg, Gazprom transgaz Ukhta, Gazprom transgaz Tchaikovsky, Gazprom export, Gazflot, Gazprom dobycha shelf, Shtokman Development AG etc.

On June 24, the delegation visited the shipbuilding plants of Saint Petersburg – Severnaya Verf, Admiralty Shipyards and Baltiysky Zavod, which supply products for the needs of Gazprom. A meeting took place at the Baltiysky Zavod premises dedicated to the prospects for expanding production and engineering capacities of Russian shipbuilders, which fulfill Gazprom’s orders. Taking part in the meeting were top managers from Russian leading shipbuilding companies – United Shipbuilding Corporation, Admiralty Shipyards, Amur Shipbuilding Plant, Baltiysky Zavod, Vyborg Shipbuilding Plant, Zvezdochka Shiprepairing Center, Severnoye Machine-Building Enterprise (Sevmash), Severnaya Verf, Krylov Shipbuilding Research Institute etc.

Addressing the meeting participants Alexander Ananenkov noted that Gazprom attached great significance to developing the Russian continental shelf with the total area of more than 5 million square km (25 per cent of the world ocean’s shelf) as well as to the prospects for LNG production and sea-borne transportation.

At the same time, the Company is striving to maximally engage the production capacities of domestic producers. Meanwhile, there is an obvious lack of both production and engineering capacities to construct modern marine equipment for offshore operations. It is, first of all, referred to drilling rigs and new-generation production platforms.

“Gazprom supports Russian shipbuilders’ initiative on creating new production capacities to manufacture drilling and production platforms, LNG carriers and individual blocks and modules of marine equipment. Offshore field development up to 2020 will demand over ten drilling and production platforms, over 50 vessels and marine equipment of various types as well as at least 23 LNG carriers. We are pursuing the objective of placing the bulk of orders with domestic producers. In order to deliver this objective, the producers should comprehensively upgrade shipbuilding companies to satisfy the demands of Gazprom as a large customer in terms of quality and quantity,” said Alexander Ananenkov.

The meeting participants discussed the progress at the shipbuilding companies that fulfill Gazprom’s orders within the Russian shelf development process. It was pointed out that generally all the work was being done according to schedule.

Attention was also paid to the development prospects for domestic shipbuilding plants and sci-tech centers with regard to maximal utilization of their production and engineering capacities when implementing Gazprom’s orders.

Special emphasis was put on fact that the issue of replacing high-tech foreign spare parts by their domestic analogues was especially acute for Russia nowadays.

“It is necessary to adopt a state import substitution program that would embrace not only the shipbuilding, but the engine, machine, oil and gas equipment sectors as well. This program should encourage Russian producers to be active in equipment upgrade, certification, adoption and development of advanced technologies,” stated Ananenkov while summarizing the meeting results.

The initial aggregate hydrocarbon resources of Russia’s continental shelf average 100 billion tons of fuel equivalent, of which 80 per cent is gas. The bulk of the hydrocarbon resources (around 70 per cent) is concentrated in the Barents, Pechora and Kara Seas, with gas and condensate prevailing in the Barents and Kara, and oil – in the Pechora Sea

Gazprom considers the Barents, Kara, Pechora and Caspian Sea shelves, the Ob and Taz Bays offshore areas, the Okhotsk Sea shelf, including the Sakhalin Island and West Kamchatka offshore to be most promising.

For the purpose of arranging operations at offshore fields Gazprom elaborated and adopted in September 2005 the Program for Gazprom’s activities aimed at hydrocarbon resources development on the Russian Federation shelf until 2030.

The Program stipulates comprehensive and stagewise development of offshore hydrocarbon resources, application of modern highly efficient technical and technological solutions to all activity areas, taking into account advanced global practices.

At present, the shipbuilding companies of Northwestern Russia are implementing Gazprom’s orders for the Arctic shelf development.

In Severodvinsk, Sevmash Production Association is constructing the Prirazlomnaya offshore ice-resistant stationary platform, Zvezdochka Shiprepairing Center – the Arkticheskaya jack-up floating drilling rig, the Vyborg Shipbuilding Plant – the Severnoye Siyanie (Northern Lights) and the Polyarnaya Zvezda (Polar Star) semi-submersible drilling rigs.

Gazprom has arranged actions on engineering the facilities for the Russian shelf development. The Krylov Shipbuilding Research Institute has elaborated by Gapzrom’s order a draft concept of an offshore ice-resistant drilling rig, engineering designs for eleven vessels to ensure offshore fields pre-development, the engineering design for a mobile floating drilling rig is underway; the Program for marine equipment creation and utilization in offshore oil and gas field development until 2030 is being elaborated.