THE Estonian Maritime Administration has awarded a contract to Aker Arctic Technology of Helsinki, Finland, for designing a new multipurpose icebreaker that will be capable of functioning as an offshore support vessel out of season.
AAT’s brief is to carry out conceptual design, the basic design, preparation of the tender documents needed for a public procurement for building the ship, and construction supervision.
Aker Yards has built more than 60% of the icebreakers in the world and the latest design on the AAT board for Estonia will be the third OSV/icebreaker model developed at the Helsinki facility, the other two being the Finnish Board of Navigation sisters Fennica and Nordica, plus their smaller sister, Botnica, all three of which were built in the 1990s and are North Sea regulars.
The technical solution proposed by Aker Arctic represents the latest development in modern icebreaker technology. The new-generation multipurpose icebreaker for Estonia will measure 108m length overall by 28m maximum breadth.
AAT says it will be able to break 1.2m thick level ice forward and astern at a continuous speed of three knots, as well as move smoothly through heavy ice ridges due to her novel stern design. The vessel’s twin azimuthing drives will have a total shaft power of 17MW.
The tendering process for building the vessel will be announced in May this year and the final costs, as well as the deadline for completing the construction works, will be known in the autumn.
The aim is to have the vessel enter service in time for the 2010-11 icebreaking season.
AAT has double reason to celebrate as Samsung of Korea has just delivered the world’s first Arctic “double acting” shuttle tanker with twin 10MW pod drive.
It will handle oil exports from Timan Pechora for LUKoil/ConocoPhillips and is of the same concept as the Neste Shipping tankers, Tempera and Mastera, which the designer says have established an excellent five-year service record.
Meanwhile, Ulstein Design has signed contracts with the Spanish yard, Astilleros de Sevilla, for delivering design and equipment packages to two PX105 class platform supply vessels for EDT Offshore Ltd, Cyprus.
Ulstein Group will supply design, detail documentation and main equipment. This includes products such as main switchboards, bridge and control-room consoles.
The 88m vessels will be classed Clean Design (double hull), comfort class V3, dynamic positioning (DPII) and will feature 1,000sq m of cargo deck with a loading capacity of 3,000 tonnes.
Established in 1980 in Cyprus, the EDT shipping company specialises in tug and rescue work, underwater operations and pipe laying, and expects to take delivery of the sisters in April and August, 2009, respectively.
Over in the US, Crowley Maritime has placed an order with Gunderson Marine to build two additional heavy-lift series 122m length overall by 32m breadth “wide deck” barges.
They will handle project work for the offshore energy industry in the US Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere and will expand Crowley’s fleet of this type of barge to five. All are designed and built for the deepwater market.
Gunderson is the same company that built the first three barges in the series, the Marty J, 455-2 and 455-3, all of which were delivered in 2007.
Recommended for you
