Offshore staff
ESBJERG, Denmark – Blue Water Shipping has signed a contract to transport the two hull sections of the new subsea construction vesselKhankendi from Singapore to the new Baku Shipyard in Azerbaijan.
Once completed, the vessel will be deployed for theStage 2 development of the Shah Deniz field, 70 km (43 mi) offshore Azerbaijan sector in the Caspian Sea.
The hull sections will be transported on board a semisubmersible vessel from Singapore via the Suez to the Black Sea. Once they have been floated off the vessel, tugs will take over and wet tow the hull sections through the Russian Volga-Don river system and its 18 locks.
On arrival at the Caspian Sea, ocean-going tugs will manage the final part of the journey from Astrakhan to Baku.
Each hull section is 140 m (459 ft) long, 16 m (52 ft) wide and 17 m (56 ft) high, and each weighs 5,400 metric tons (5,952 tons). Blue Water claims this will establish a new record for the longest cargo ever transported via the Volga-Don system. The company set the previous record in 2007 when transporting two similar sections, each 133 m (436 ft) long.
04/29/2015
