Page 8 - FSUOGM Week 33 2021
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FSUOGM PIPELINES & TRANSPORT FSUOGM
CPC cleans up Novorossiysk oil spill
RUSSIA
THE Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) has announced the successful clean-up of an oil spill near the Russian port of Novorossiysk, which originally occurred on August 7.
The consortium, which operates the pipe- line that runs from the Tengiz oilfield in West Kazakhstan to Novorossiysk, said this week that the water quality around its marine terminal in Yuzhnaya Ozereevka on the Black Sea had returned to normal following the spill.
The spill happened during the loading of the Minerva Symphony tanker and the consortium’s general director, Nikolay Gorban, told a press conference on August 13 that a manufacturing defect in the single point mooring (SPM) expan- sion joint was likely the culprit.
The company said its emergency response – involving 17 vessels that deployed booms, skim- mers and oil storage tanks – had cleaned the spill on the same day. Russia’s main federal investigating authority launched a probe into the spill, CPC said on August 12, adding at the time that “representa- tives of the Investigative Committee are interview- ing CPC employees and examining documents”.
Authorities began investigating the spill after scientists contested CPC’s initial estimate of its coverage, saying the spill had spread over nearly 80 square km.
CPC, meanwhile, said only 12 cubic metres of crude was spilled and that the oil only spread over an area of around 200 square metres.
CPC issued a statement on August 14 not- ing that its environmental engineers, working with contractors and independent laboratory specialists, had found that the condition of the air and water in the marine terminal sea and coastal areas “remains stable and causes no concerns”.
The consortium issued another statement on August 17, saying that the Sfera environmental lab and Kuban ECOProject had reported similar findings after testing sea water and air samples taken during August 8-14.
Gorban said last week that the spill would not affect CPC’s annual lifting plan or its dividend policy, with second-quarter dividends to be determined at the next board meeting scheduled for late September.
Gazprom Neft completes Russia’s first LNG bunkering vessel
RUSSIA
RUSSIA’S state-run Gazprom Neft has com- pleted construction of the country’s first lique- fied natural gas (LNG) bunkering vessel, the company said on August 12.
The company said the 5,800 cubic metre capacity vessel, called the Dmitry Mendeleev, would shortly begin its maiden voyage towards its fixed berthing in the Baltic Sea.
The final stage of the vessel’s construction involved testing of gas and cryogenic equipment, loading systems, and LNG storage and offload- ing pumps and compressors
Noting that LNG would play a “key role” in the decarbonisation of maritime trans- port over the medium term, Gazprom Neft deputy chairman Anatoly Cherner added: “In successfully implementing Russia’s first project to build an LNG bunkering vessel, Gazprom Neft has, effectively, created a new market sector for the country – in marine gas motor fuel – from scratch. This year will see us starting commercial LNG operations in the Baltic region.”
Gazprom Neft noted that the ship adopted the Arc4 reinforced hull, which means it can navigate ice of up to 80 cm in thickness.
The ship’s onboard power plant has been designed with a goal of zero emissions and will use tank-return gas (TRG) – or boil-off gas – as fuel. The company added that all of the LNG-bunkering equipment was fully compliant with Marine Pollution (Marpol) and ECO-S environmental standards.
Gazprom Neft announced at the end of May that the vessel had completed its sea trials, dur- ing which its main propulsion systems, naviga- tion equipment and control systems were tested.
The Dmitry Mendeleev is expected to pro- vide transportation and bunkering of low-ton- nage LNG fuel at ports in the Gulf of Finland as well as the Baltic Sea ports of St Petersburg, Ust- Luga, Primorsk, Kaliningrad and Vyborg.
Gazprom Neft and Russian shipping major Sovcomflot agreed in June 2019 to co-operate on LNG bunkering. Under the terms of the deal, the two sides agreed to working towards supplying Sovcomflot’s tanker fleet with LNG fuel.
The agreement came just days after the com- pany revealed that it had concluded another co-operation agreement with Rosmorport, this time for the management of LNG bunkering for the Ust-Luga-Baltiysk rail passenger ferry.
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 33 18•August•2021
