Blue Water to manage subsea construction vessel shipment for Shah Deniz
April 29, 2015
Blue Water Shipping has signed a contract to transport the two hull sections of the new subsea construction vessel Khankendi from Singapore to the new Baku Shipyard in Azerbaijan.
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.
