Delivered: icebreaking vessel duo
Lukoil takes home Keppel icebreakers
Keppel Singmarine has completed two icebreakers built for one of the harshest marine frontiers, the Arctic Sea, for Lukoil.
The second vessel was named Varandey during a naming ceremony at Marina at Keppel Bay today.
The first vessel, Toboy, was delivered to Lukoil in August.
Varandey will join Toboy in the Barents Sea of Russia where they will help forge passages through the ice for oil tankers plying the Varandey Terminal.
Both Varandey and Toboy are designed to work in the harshest environments, cutting through solid ice over 1.7 metres thick, and operating in extreme temperatures as low as -45C.
According to the latest US geological survey, it is estimated that the Arctic may hold as much as 90 billion barrels of undiscovered oil reserves and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
“This is the first time that icebreakers meant for the Arctic region are built in the tropics,” said Keppel Singmarine chairman Charles Foo.
“The increasing oil and gas exploration and production activities in the Arctic present tremendous opportunities for specialised and robust vessels such as the icebreaking vessels.