Blue Water Shipping: Historic Transport to Caspian Sea (Russia)

With a clearance of just a few centimeters, Blue Water Shipping is the first company in history to transport cargo with a width of 17.35 m on the Volga-Don river system. One of the items shipped on the barge weighed in at 1,050 mt.

The record-breaking transport was part of a shipment of 4 river barges from Mariupol to Astrakhan. The overall project is the transport of a Le Tourneau S116 (E) specially designed jack-up rig. The rig is constructed by Lamprell at the Hamriyah facility in Sharjah (UAE) and will be re-assembled, commissioned and delivered to its client by Lamprell at a nominated shipyard in Astrakhan, Russia.

Due to the limited width of the river system, the jack-up rig was separated into smaller sections in preparation for transport. In total, the transport consists of three heavy lift shipments from Hamriyah til Mariupol and the finishing river barge transport to Astrakhan in the Caspian Sea.

Loading of the first heavy lift vessel with 34,000 m3 was completed in March in Hamriyah. Once loaded, the vessel departed for a 14 day journey to Mariupol, where experts from Blue Water Shipping were ready to perform the difficult and demanding task of safely transshipping the cargo onto 4 river barges.

The transshipment  of the cargo onto river barges was performed by a team from Blue Water Shipping consisting of port captains, stevedores, naval architects and project forwarders.

“Both the transshipment and the river transport are demanding tasks. Blue Water Shipping adheres to high HSEQ standards, which is why we have put every effort into securing the safety and environmental aspects of the transport”, says Kim Beier, Quality Coordinator at Blue Water Shipping.

The experienced project team from Blue Water could report that the entire transport moved along without problems.

The total transport includes 85,000 m3 of cargo, totaling 8,205 metric ton.

For the past 15 years, Blue Water Shipping has delivered transport and logistics solutions to the Caspian Sea – primarily for the oil and gas industry. Blue Water Shipping has completed several, historic transport to the Caspian Sea: A few years ago Blue Water Shipping was the first company to transport a rig to the Caspian Sea through the river system. Another recent project set the record for the longest cargo shipped on the river system with the longest items measuring 132.8 m.

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Source: BWS, July 5, 2012