Offshore staff
ZUG, Switzerland – Nord Stream 2 AG says Blue Water Shipping will transport, handle, and store 113,000 of the pipes for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline through the Baltic Sea.
Earlier the Nord Stream 2 consortium awarded Wasco Coatings Europe the contract for concrete weight coating, storage, and logistics of the 200,000 pipes required for the project.
The remaining 87,000 pipes are being shipped directly from the coating facilities to the pipelay vessels.
Blue Water’s remit covers loading and sea transport of pipes from Wasco’s coating facilities in Mukran, Germany, and Kotka, Finland, to storage yards in Karlshamn, Sweden, and Hanko, Finland, with around 475 shipments by coaster vessels.
The Danish contractor will also be responsible for operation of the storage yards and loading of the feeder vessels transferring the pipes to Allseas’ pipelayers.
“We have comprehensive experience with port operations including the management and operation of temporary facilities,” said Kurt Skov, CEO and founder of Blue Water Shipping.
Wasco is coating each of the 200,000 high-density, 12-m (39.4-ft) steel pipes with concrete, doubling their weight to on average 24 tons per pipe. The first shipment of pipes should depart in July.
The twin 1,200-km (746-mi) Nord Stream 2 pipelines will mainly follow the route of the existing Nord Stream pipeline from the coast of Russia to Greifswald on Germany’s northern coast, with capacity to transport up to 55 bcm/yr of gas and connecting to pipelines within the European Union for onward transmission.
This latest contract brings the total contractual commitments on the Nord Stream 2 project to more than €4 billion ($4.56 billion), involving more than 200 companies from 17 countries, most of them in Europe.
06/30/2017
