The ‘Big Four’ companies start transferring their dredging ships to the flag of Russia
Boskalis is the first among them
Boskalis was among the first foreign companies operating in the Russian market to transfer its ships to the flag of Russia, Eduard Silantiev, Executive Director, Boskalis, said at the 5th International Congress “Hydraulic Engineering Structures and Dredging” being held by IAA PortNews in Moscow.
According to the speaker, back in 2020, the company asked RF Ministry of Transport about the procedure for obtaining a permit to use foreign-flagged ships for coastal shipping in RF. Even at that time, the speaker said, Boskalis was ready to operate in the market with ships under the flag of Russia.
“One year later I can say that we operate four Russian-flagged ships: Nordic Giant, two barges and Arctic Scradeway, a ship for underwater gravel leveling under construction in Murmansk” he said.
According to RF Government’s Decree published in 2020, foreign-flagged ships not included into any Russian register can perform one-time coastwise shipping operations (lifting of sunken property, hydraulic engineering and subsea works) only in case of absence or insufficiency of dedicated domestic ships or if Russian ships cannot meet the requirements on the period of time, the scope of works or the area of operation.
That could threaten implementation of long-term agreements signed between the customers and contractors of dredging works in the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation with its large-scale projects on production and transshipment of raw materials.
When speaking at the Congress, Roberto Pelicer, Deputy General Director of Mordraga, also told about the company’s intentions to transfer some of the ships to the flag of Russia. However, he has not specified when or how many ships can be transferred.
Paul Voortmeijer, Regional Manager, Van Oord, shared the company’s plans to look into the transfer of its ships to the flag of Russia if there are long-term contracts in the country.
As Aleksandr Bengert, General Director of Hydrographic Company (acts as a contractor under the projects on construction and operation of new port infrastructure facilities within NSR waters), said earlier, Russian companies have no dredgers with capacity sufficient for large-scale capital works on the Northern Sea Route. Only small ships are available in the country.
80% of the global dredging fleet is owned by the ‘Big Four’ including Jan De Nul Group, DEME Group, Boskalis and Van Oord.
Mordraga is performing reconstruction of Sea Channel in the Gulf of Ob in the Kara Sea, a project scheduled for 2020-2022. The project worth RUB 37.5 billion foresees dredging of about 59.8 million cbm.
Boskalis operates on the Sakhalin shelf under the project on Development of Kirinskoye Gas Condensate Field (Sakhalin 3 project) as well as in the Gulf of Ob under the Arctic-LNG 2 project and other projects.
