The International Resource Journal: Vyborg Shipyard

Vyborg Shipyard
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admin on 18 December, 2009 02:45:00
 
Capabilities and Ambitions
Vyborg Shipyard JSC is one of the largest shipbuilding companies in the
North-Western Region of Russia, with over 50 years experience in shipbuilding.
The company is located in Vyborg, on the North side of the Gulf of Finland,
about 50 km from the Finnish bor­der and 130 km from St. Petersburg. Its
strategic loca­tion between two big harbours in Vysotsk and Vyborg,
proximity to ports in Helsinki and St. Petersburg and to international sea roads
make it attractive for ship repair. The company employs over 1,500 qualified
workers and engineers certified to international standards, aimed at finding
efficient, innovative and customer-oriented solu­tions enabling the shipyard
to provide utmost profes­sional service to their customers.
Since the Shipyard was founded in 1948, and until the early 1980s, it was mainly
in­volved in the construction of medium-weight transport vessels in series
of 8-10 units per year, with launch facilities restrictions of 140m in length
and 18m in width. Since 1980, the shipyard has been renovated and reoriented for
the construction of SSFDRs (Semi-Submersible Floating Drilling Rigs) and
Jack-ups with an esti­mated building rate of one or two units of
float­ing offshore drilling rigs a year. Since then, the shipyard has built
four units of SSFDR and two units for open seas.
At the initial stage of building offshore facili­ties, Vyborg Shipyard
supplied Astrakhan shipyards with 900t block-modules and pontoons for six
semi-submersible drilling rigs, to be finally assem­bled in Astrakhan and
used in the Caspian Sea.
Further, for the Joint Venture Vietsovpetro, Vyborg delivered seven sets of
topside modules for stationary drilling platforms.
Proving high reliability
In the mid-1990’s, Vyborg Shipyard performed a modernisation of two
semi-submersible drill­ing platforms for operation in the Atlantic sea, at
depths up to 2,000m. For extending columns and pontoons of the platforms, a
unique lifting opera­tion was performed with the rise of the entire platform
while afloat. This operation was carried out for the first time in the country.
It is worth mentioning that all of the SSFDRs and jack-ups ever built by Vyborg
for foreign part­ners are currently being exploited by oil and gas
companies, having proved their high reliability.
As a result of our long-term and close cooperation with Moss Maritime AS
(Norway), a multi-purpose bare deck platform Moss CS-50 was built. Platform
CS-50 is a fifth generation of semi-submersible platforms; its bare deck is
strong enough to accommodate a topside structure with the weight up to 20,000t.
While building this platform, Vyborg mastered unique construction and welding
technologies for brand-new in the country, never previously used types of steel.
A new welding technology using preheating has been developed and applied.
The hull weight of this bare deck SSFDR, de­livered to Moss Maritime in May
2002, amounted to about 15,000 tonnes—with construction car­ried out
in only 18 months.
Further to its Norwegian customers, Vyborg has so far built six outfitted hulls
of vessels for supplying and maintenance of drilling platforms. The time of
construction for such a vessel is 8-10 months with the subsequent 3-4 months
required for the completion at a customer’s shipyard.
The construction of outfitted vessels’ hulls is an on-going project. Thus,
for the unique world offshore ice-resistant stationary platform Prirazlomnaya,
the shipyard produced a power distribution module with total weight of about
3,000 tonnes, which was delivered to Sevmash in May 2006. The construction of
this module was conducted on the leased special barge UR-93, which then was
towed with the module to Severodvinsk. For Prirazlomnaya, Vyborg has recently
completed the construction of an accommodation block module weighing about 3,000
tonnes.
For another big customer, Lukoil-Kaliningrad, Vyborg produced and delivered
7,000t of preas­sembled sections of the single point mooring for tanker
loading at the Varandei field.
Over the last five years, Vyborg JSC has been concentrating its efforts on
offshore projects, constantly taking part in various tenders (often together
with its foreign partners) to act as a sub­contractor for a number of
ambitious shelf devel­opment projects.
Vyborg’s efforts pay off
And the efforts have duly paid off: in March 2007, a contract was signed with a
Swiss com­pany (Sea Horse Ventures) to build a platform similar to CS-50.
However, in this case, the amount of hull structures was increased with
additional elements; such as a cantilever with an accommodation block (two
tiers), techno­logical block and a drill floor. Also, the amount of the
installed equipment increased—bringing the total weight of the SSFDR hull
to 18,700t. Although in accordance with the contract the delivery period was set
for March 2009, Vyborg shipyard, prompted by the customer’s wants, managed
to attract additional funds and com­plete the construction before the
deadline on December 20 2008—three months before the contractual deadline.
It is safe to say that Vyborg Shipyard has mastered the technology of building
SSFDRs, and has accumulated the experience of working with cold-resistant
steels. That, as well as the fact that it possesses unique production facilities
by Russian standards, allows the company to build SSFDRs in an astonishingly
short time.
As an example, in the times of the “planned economy” of the former
Soviet Union, the con­struction of a SSFDR unit would typically take between
43-45 months, whereas in 2002, a bare deck SSFDR was built in just 17
months—proving that it is now possible to fully build a SSFDR in 36
months. However, these timescales could only be met on the condition of a timely
delivery of all main components. Thus, if during certain times almost all
equipment was manufactured locally, the cur­rent situation would be
completely different—and the vast majority of the equipment is now
import­ed. The boom of shelf-development construction has led to a drastic
shortage of capital equip­ment; as a result, suppliers not only dramatically
increased the prices of their products, but also extended the terms of their
delivery. This is espe­cially true for drilling equipment, high-power diesel
generators and thrusters. Therefore, it is the terms of delivery of capital
equipment currently that now define projected SSFDR delivery times. The
com­pany is very pleased to have developed very close partnerships with our
trusted and reliable suppli­ers who help us deliver projects on time.
In November 2007, Vyborg Shipyard won a tender and signed a contract with
Gazflot LLC for the engineering, construction and delivery of two SSFDRs to be
used in the Arctic seas. The project of the platform MOSS CS-50 was once again
cho­sen as a basic design.
The delivery on this contract is due in late 2010 and in March 2011. In order to
speed up the construction process, it was decided to manufacture the lower hull
at Vyborg Shipyard and the topside structure at Samsung Heavy Industries
Company’s SHI shipyard in Korea. For the first time in the history of
Russia’s shipbuild­ing, the integration of the lower hull and topside
industry will be carried out in Murmansk by the Russian contractors with some
assistance of their foreign counterparts.
At the present time, Vyborg has already com­pleted the assembly of two
sections of the pon­toons with the columns put into a single unit with
installation of horizontal bracings of the first of Gazflot’s SSFDR.
Currently in progress is internal work in pontoons and columns—including
assem­bly and systems and mechanism tests—in order to insure a smooth
transportation of the module to the Murmansk area for further integration with
the topside module (which will be coming from Korea).
Simultaneously, pontoons with columns for the second SSFDR for Gazflot are now
being as­sembled into a single module with transportation to the site of
integration with the top unit (also transported from Korea) due in early 2011.
Together with the Dutch company Dockwise, Vyborg works on finding solutions for
all possible issues of these demanding operations. The Krylov Shipbuilding
Research Institute has been taking a very proactive role in the engineering
parts of this project.
Moving forward
One of the major mid-term goals of Vyborg Ship­yard involves a number of
modernisation activities, developed to increase production capacity and reduce
labour content of the production process.
As the first priority, Vyborg sees the need to develop measures to increase the
capacities of its launching facilities. So far, during the construc­tion of
tanker DWT 12,000 tonnes with a length of 149m (exceeding the size of the
existing float­ing-out basin) the company was forced to launch the vessels
in two parts with the ensuing afloat docking with the help of a floating crane
(lifting capacity of 300t). On the 21st of June 2007, the Vyborg shipyard
launched its first vessel with the width of 20 m. The hull of the ROV vessel,
for ser­vicing underwater pipelines, was assembled on a barge, which was
then floated to the deep-sea area there the vessel was launched. Traditionally,
such operations in the country were held only with the use of a floating dock.
Mastering this technology will allow Vyborg to build vessels of any length and
width needed for the development of such difficult fields as Shtokman.
The company also plans to upgrade the hull production complex in order to reduce
labour.
The company plans to not limit themselves with the implementation of individual,
albeit chal­lenging, tasks, but also understands the impor­tance of the
Federal-level Shelf development projects. Shareholders of Vyborg Shipyard
recently decided to participate in a tender announced by the Russian Federal
Energy Ministry. The invest­ment project named “Creation of modern
ship­building complex with a dry dock in the Western re­gion of
Russia” implies the development of a new shipyard in the area adjacent to
the deep waters of port Primorsk, Leningrad County. The shipyard will be built
using a modern underlying technology that provides reduced labour content of the
manu­facturing process thus ensuring shorter construc­tion timescale.
The yard will be provided with a building-launching complex with a closed dry
dock. Planned dimensions of the dock are approximately 400m by 85m by16.5m,
equipped by crane equip­ment that will allow for installation of large
blocks weighing up to 1,600 tons.
In order to reduce the time of construction of a SSDP unit, a special
“heavy zone” is created on the premises of the shipyard, with a
rein­forced embankment to allow the assembly of the SSFDR topsides, top
modules for fixed production platforms and jack-ups. Having taken into
con­sideration the experience of foreign shipyards, the extensive use of
contracted supplies of hulls modules form the other shipyards is envisaged.
The estimated production capacities will al­low the construction of
Semi-Submersible Drill­ing Rigs; Oil Rigs; Tankers DWT up to 160,000 tons;
Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) and Floating-Point Units
(FPU), as well as Gas carriers with a capacity of up to 250,000 m3.
Such a shipyard would consistently meet the needs of Gazprom and other customers
in their oil and gas exploration and production projects. Provided the question
of financing is resolved, this project could be in operation by the end of 2010.
For the time being, Vyborg Shipyard is proud to offer its production capacities
for construction and modernisation of semi-submersible and jack-up drilling
rigs; range of offshore vessels; tankers; vessels for emergency and deep-sea
operations and other projects of high technical complexity.
www.vyborgshipyard.ru