Towing of the Dredger ISLANDER



Project Summary: 

Period: June – November 2025

Route in Two Stages:

  1. Neutral waters of the Baltic Sea (58°45.6’N; 21°34.2’E) – Port of St. Petersburg
    Total route length: 574 km
  2. Port of St. Petersburg – Port of Belomorsk – Karetsky Roadstead – Bukhta Sever Port – Port of St. Petersburg
    Total route length: ~3,431 km (~2,557 km sea section, 874 km along Russia’s inland waterways)

Fleet: Tugs “Vityaz” and “Silver Lovena”

Cargo/Object: Pontoon-type excavator dredger with spud poles – “ISLANDER”

Fleet for your projects is here

PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION:

The towing of the dredger took place in two stages.

Stage 1: The dredger ISLANDER had to be received in the neutral waters of the Baltic Sea. The object was delivered to the Port of St. Petersburg without incident, albeit with some minor delays due to deteriorating weather conditions during the transit.

Stage 2: This stage was more extensive, as evident from the total route length. The dredger ISLANDER needed to be mobilized from St. Petersburg to Bukhta Sever Port for excavation works as part of the construction of an oil terminal for the Vostok Oil project.

Due to a slight delay in the dredger’s arrival in St. Petersburg, it was decided that the tug Vityaz would tow the dredger to Karetsky Roadstead (Port of Arkhangelsk), where it would hand over to the tug Silver Lovena, which would then deliver the object to the destination port.

After arriving at Bukhta Sever Port, the tug Silver Lovena supported the dredger’s operations. Since the dredger is non-self-propelled and equipped with spud poles, our tug provided re-mooring and positioning at the points required for the work.

The return mobilization was also carried out by the vessel Silver Lovena. The tug’s departure from Bukhta Sever occurred just as ice formation was beginning. As a precaution, the tug Navarin was kept on standby. The challenging ice conditions did not lead to delays, and the dredger was delivered to St. Petersburg on time.

For reference:
Bukhta Sever Port is an oil terminal under construction on the western coast of the Taymyr Peninsula. It will facilitate the transshipment of oil from the Vostok Oil project fields (with a resource base of 6.5 billion tons) for further transportation along the Northern Sea Route. The terminal is set to become the largest in Russia. Oil will be supplied via a 400-km main oil pipeline from the Paiyakha field group and the Vankor cluster. The loading infrastructure is designed to simultaneously load two tankers with a deadweight of 120,000 tons each. Construction of the project began in May 2021.

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