OREANDA-NEWS. September 09, 2009. The hundredth shipment of crude oil was carried by an Arctic shuttle tanker of the Vasily Dinkov type, owned by the Sovcomflot (SCF) Group, from the Fixed Offshore Ice-resistant Offloading Terminal (FOIROT) at Varandey, situated 22 km offshore in the Barents Sea.

Today three ships are successfully serving this unique seaborne transportation project of oil from the Varandey FOIROT. These vessels are: Vasily Dinkov, accepted for operation in December 2007 and tankers Kapitan Gotsky and Timofey Guzhenko, which joined the fleet in 2008 and 2009 respectively.

Due to the unique technical solutions incorporated within the ships of this series, they can be operated effectively in the harsh climate conditions of the Arctic seas all year-round. The ships have an ice-breaking capacity when moving ahead or astern, which reduces their manoeuvring time and enhances the safety of each vessel.

Arctic shuttle tankers of the Vasily Dinkov type have already proven that they are capable of operating in extremely low temperatures. Despite rather harsh ice conditions encountered the Arctic tankers are able to operate independently, without the need for any ice-breaker escort.


In total, by today 6.8 million tonnes (8 million cub. metres) of oil were transported by SCF Group’s tankers from the Varandey terminal, in very harsh ice conditions.
Sovcomflot (SCF) Group – is one of Russia’s largest infrastructure enterprises. Its fleet comprises 140 vessels of 9.7 million tonnes (dwt) in total, and the shipbuilding portfolio includes 21 ships of an aggregate deadweight of 2.0 million tonnes (dwt). The average age of vessels in the tanker fleet is six years (the world average age is 12 years). SCF Group is a world leader in the product carrier segment; it is the second largest in the Aframax tanker segment and owns the largest ice fleet. The Group’s services include not only transporting hydrocarbons for its customers, but also trans-shipping crude oil via FSO facilities and developing effective logistics for transporting energy.