Icebreaking tankers ship Russian oil

State-of-the-art vessels shuttle oil year-round from offshore terminal in southeastern Barents Sea; 250-mile ice transit in winter

Alan Bailey

Petroleum News

In a first-of-its-kind venture for Arctic oil production, a fleet of three icebreaking tankers are shipping oil from an offshore terminal in Russia’s southeastern Barents Sea. The Barents Sea operation, established as a joint venture between ConocoPhillips and Russian oil company Lukoil, involves transporting oil through about 250 nautical miles of sea ice during the winter without the use of any escorting ice breakers, Alexander Iyerusalimskiy, ConocoPhillips marine engineering lead, told the International Association for Energy Economics’ North American conference in Anchorage, Alaska, on July 31.

Offshore terminal

The tankers were built in 2008 and 2009, with shipments of oil starting in 2008, Iyerusalimskiy said. After more than 500 shipments and more than 250 million barrels of oil transported from the Barents Sea terminal, no ship has ever missed picking up its cargo and no icebreaker escort has ever been required, he said.

Several challenges

And no one had previous experience of building such large ships for Arctic use – the tankers have waterline lengths of almost 250 meters, Iyerusalimskiy said. Each vessel has a displacement of 92,000 metric tons and can carry up to 70,000 metric tons of crude oil, he said.

“This is by far the largest icebreaker ever built in the world,” he said.

The design required a hull strong enough to withstand operational ice conditions while also minimizing ice resistance when in motion. The vessels needed excellent maneuverability in the ice, coupled with the reliability required to ensure the regular shipment of oil from the Varandey terminal.

Engine pods

But the designers of the icebreaking tankers for the Barents Sea opted for a novel hull design, with extreme ice breaking capabilities at both the bow and the stern and with the bow and the stern equally strong, Iyerusalimskiy said. The tankers can negotiate ice when moving forwards, like a conventional icebreaker, or when moving astern, he said. And although the icebreaking tankers can keep up a good speed moving ahead through moderate sea ice, they do not need to “back and ram” the ice, as with a conventional icebreaker, when encountering a thick ice ridge — instead the vessel can turn around and use its propellers to carve through the ice.

Gauges on the ships are wired using fiber optic cabling rather than electrical cabling, thus enabling the gauges to be intrinsically safe in a vessel carrying highly inflammable materials, Iyerusalimskiy said.

Ice monitoring system

And the vessels obtain satellite imagery and ice charts three times a week, to help the crew negotiate the winter sea ice.

Exceeded expectations

Iyerusalimskiy placed the icebreaking tanker operations within the context of a seaborne oil trade that has been steadily growing for several decades but which, he said, has seen a declining rate and size of oil spills. And although it is still too early to draw many conclusions from the icebreaking tanker experience, results so far provide reasons for optimism and indicate that the vessels can be operated safely, he said.

An emerging new era for Arctic shipping

An increasing amount of shipping activity in the Arctic and the successful operation of a system in which icebreaking tankers ship oil from a terminal at the Russian port of Varandey on the Barents sea coast are all indicators of significant changes in Arctic maritime activity, Lawson Brigham, distinguished professor of geography and Arctic policy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, told the International Association for Energy Economics’ North American conference on July 31.

“This is the new maritime Arctic that we’re dealing with,” Brigham said.

The Earth’s warming climate is causing profound change in the Arctic Ocean as the sea ice responds to that warming, Brigham said. But, although thick multiyear sea ice is gradually being replaced by thin first-year ice, it is misleading to think of the Arctic as becoming free of ice, he cautioned. Although the minimum ice extent at the end of the summer ice melt has been shrinking, there is an extensive ice cover in the region for nine or 10 months of the year. And winter temperatures in the central Arctic Ocean continue to be very low.

“It’s not ice free,” Brigham said. “We have 2,200 nautical miles across the top of the world and the ice is a profound and complex barrier to ships and (oil) platforms and whatever.”

Consequently, it remains essential to have ships and platforms intended for use in the Arctic designed to meet international standards for Arctic operations, he said.

No Arctic regulations

And only seven to eight percent of the Arctic Ocean has been charted to international standards, he said. Completing the charting of the ocean to the standards appropriate to safe navigation would likely take more than a century to complete, while the charting of Alaska waters would require significant federal funding through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, he said.

An Arctic marine shipping assessment completed by the Arctic Council for the period 2004 to 2009 found that, with global economics driving an upsurge in Arctic marine transportation, many countries around the world have taken an interest in the Arctic Ocean. The shipping assessment made 17 recommendations around three main themes: the need for a polar code for ship structural standards, marine safety gear, crew training and navigation; the need to protect the Arctic people and environment from oil spills and harmful emissions; and the current lack of a modern infrastructure in the Arctic, including ports, oil spill response capacity, communications technology and salvage capabilities, Brigham said.

—Alan Bailey