The Vyborg Shipyard has stopped plans to build a new shipyard in Primorsk, General Director Valery Levchenko said yesterday. The new shipyard was to specialize in construction of LNG tankers from Russian offshore fields, first of all from Shtokman. In 2008 Gazprom promised Vyborg Shipyard plant to order construction of two LNG carriers with an estimated cost of 300 million USD each and two more tankers on a longer perspective. These plans inspired the owners of the yard to prepare for the construction of a new shipyard in Primorsk, Leningradskaya Oblast. The necessary investments were guaranteed by the state-owned “Vneshekonombank”, which was ready to open a 1 billion EUR credit line for the project.
However the new situation on the global gas market made Gazprom postpone the realization of most of its offshore projects and the contract was not signed, Byulleten Nedvizhimosti writes. Also the Vyborg Shipyard will have to correct the existing contract with Gazprom that includes construction of two drilling platforms for the Shtokman field. The platforms are to be ready in December this year and March 2011, i.e. much earlier than the realistic terms of the Shtokman start-up. According to Levchenko, Gazprom is going to use these platforms in the “Sakhalin-3” project in the Far-East of Russia.
This decision will obviously increase the total cost of the contract because of higher transportation expenses and also bring disadvantage to the shipbuilding industry in Murmansk. Initially the Murmansk Shipyard No35 was to do the final works on conjunction of the lower and upper units of the drilling platforms. Now this work will most likely be done at shipyards in South Korea, BN writes.
