Caspian Ice Class orders for Robert Allan

The contract was awarded to the Vancouver naval architects by the Turkish based Palmali Group of Companies, and the vessels will be built by Besiktas Shipyard of Altinova, Turkey. Upon delivery the vessels will be chartered to the Lukoil Oil Company of Astrakhan, Russia.

Three vessels in total are to be built and delivered by the end of 2014.

Rollie Webb, senior project director, Robert Allan, said to The Motorship that the new vessels have a pedigree that started in Canada’s Beaufort Ocean in the mid 1970’s. Robert Allan designed very specialised shallow draft icebreaking supply vessels for Dome Petroleum capable of meeting the unique challenges of working in very shallow, ice infested waters.

He said: “This experience was later used to design the first quartet of vessels that LukOil had built to our design in 2007-2009. The new designs are larger and more capable and flexible than the predecessor designs and will set a new global benchmark for ice class OSVs .”

Each of the new vessel designs will be 80m in length and specifically designed for operation in the very shallow, ice covered waters encountered in the Caspian. The vessels will meet the rules of the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping.

The first design, designated as a TundRA8000 OSV, is for a traditional OSV, satisfying RMRS ARC 4 Ice Class requirements. The second design, designated as a TundRA 8000MSRV, will be a multifunctional standby/rescue variant of the OSV design capable of meeting RMRS ARC 5 requirements.