Hotchya Naval Architect Company is designing the unique vessel. Maritime Market Magazine # 2(40), 2012 (Ocean and shelf exploration)

Hotchya Naval Architect Company is designing the unique vessel

Oil and gas production is closely related to development of multiple fields on shelves of Arctic and Far East seas. These areas have localized hydrocarbon stocks. Within the next ten years pipelines with total length exceeding 2.5 thousand kilometers will be mounted, connecting with shelves of Barents sea, Kara Sea and Sea of Okhotsk. Projects of submerged pipelines through Baltic and Black seas look grand in the same manner.

Obviously, huge efforts of many experts are required to install these pipelines on bottoms of shelves. And what is more important for implementing so ambitious projects is a need for special machines and vessels, which will be able to perform all stated tasks in a very accurate and indefectible manner.

Such “intellectual” ship is being created by designers of Hotchya Marine Design Company.

Feature of HS130 project lies in its functional capabilities. This vessel will solve the wide set of tasks for building and repair works on depth up to 500 meters and provide safety of main and field pipelines on sea oil and gas fields of the Far North. It should be noted that such a vessel is unprecedented complex project for the Russian shipbuilding industry, which may be handled only by very high skilled professionals. Moreover, for the first time Russian shipbuilders have one more super complex task to deal with– the vessel should comply with requirements of increased ice reinforcement. World-wide practice has no examples of such development until now.

It is planned to apply a variety of modern technologies for the vessel construction, and it will be equipped with the most modern and unique equipment. It is too early for discussing the details of “internals” of this perspective project, but I would like to note that the vessel will be able to perform a wide variety of tasks under conditions of Arctic latitudes – from bottom research and planning to the most difficult operations of underwater joining of pipelines.

As specified by the Statement of Works, HS130 vessel will be provided with landing platform for helicopters of Kamov (Ka-32), Sikorsky (S-61) and Sikorsky (S-92) types, cruising capacity of the vessel – 30 days, speed– about 16 knots.