Tag: Russia

Rules based on transparency and diplomacy should be used to resolve maritime issues Russia is supporting the Philippines' stand that rules based on transparency and diplomacy should be used to resolve maritime issues.Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov aired his government's support during his bilateral meeting with Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert F. del Rosario in Moscow on March 13, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said on Thursday.The 2 officials tackled regional and international issues, including maritime security in the Asia-Pacific region."They agreed that the threats faced in this area should be approached using a rules-based regime based on transparency and diplomacy. They affirmed their commitment to ensure safety of navigation and other security issues in the Asia-Pacific region," the DFA said.The Philippines earlier asked China to end the disputes in the West Philippine Sea or South China Sea by validating the 2 countries' territorial claims under the United Nations on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).Chinese Ambassador Ma Keqing declined to make a commitment on the issue but said Beijing is not ignoring the UNCLOS as a way to resolve territorial disputes.Del Rosario and Lavrov also discussed Syrian crisis and the Arab Spring phenomena in their bilateral talks, according to ...

Mining the Arctic's vast energy resources When severe snowstorms prevented life-sustaining fuel supplies from reaching the frozen Alaskan town of Nome, U.S. officials turned to a Russian company for help.The relief mission through perilous, ice-choked seas was the first mid-winter fuel delivery to western Alaska, capping a year of pioneering shipping as oil and gas development and climate change increase traffic along northern trade routes sought by centuries of Arctic explorers.Russia has staked future growth on mining the Arctic's vast energy resources, and reviving a Soviet-era shipping route along its Siberia coast is an integral part of that plan. It could also promise economic revival for Russia's ports and shipyards, struggling since their Soviet-era glory days.But industry analysts and mariners say ice floes, narrow straits, shallow waters, poor infrastructure and stormy winters continue to loom as obstacles to safe and profitable shipping through the polar shortcut."We must develop the Arctic!" said Fazil Aliyev, a sea captain and owner of the tanker that voyaged to Alaska."It is profitable for everyone. Our clients win because their cargo is delivered faster, now we need to make it economically viable... try to make it a year-round route," he said, speaking by phone from Vladivostok, ...

Multi-purpose service to St. Petersburg kicked off this week Atlantic Ro-Ro Carriers launched a general cargo service between the Port of Tampa and the Port of St. Petersburg..The service kicked off this week with a call at Tampa by the Baltic Merkur, which was loaded at the Ports America terminal with containers, heavy equipment work vehicles and freight trucks.The new monthly service uses a fleet of multi-purpose vessels that can carry a variety of general cargoes such as steel, containers, roll-on/roll-off traffic, project cargoes and bulk commodities. Transit time is 18 days, according to a company statement.Source: Journal of Commerce

Partnership with Korea and Singapore Modernization of Russian shipbuilding will be realized in partnership with Korea and Singapore.The leader of Russian shipbuilding industry - United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) launches its ambitious program that might return competitiveness to this sector of Russian economy. This sector today includes over 1 thousand of companies and employs more than 450 thousand of specialists.The USC was established in 2007 with 100% state ownership and now administrates 80% of all new projects in shipbuilding industry. It owns more than 30 companies in 11 regions of Russia. In 2007 the Russian Government adopted a program "Development of civil sea technics in 2009-2016".The program provided investments of 140 billion rubles (3,5 billion Euro) which were supposed to be used for purchasing of new foreign technologies and development of Russian technologies suppliers. By the end of this program the volume of Russian shipbuilding is expected to grow 2,5 times.In the nearest few years Russia should build two new modern shipyards on the Far East and to modernize the shipyards on the Baltic Sea - in St. Petersburg ("Admiralteiskie Verfi") and in Kaliningrad ("Yantar'").By the look of things the main partner in modernization of Russian shipbuilding will be the companies ...

The Yamal is one of Russia's biggest, most powerful icebreakers

More than 50 crew dead or missing The sinking of a floating oil rig that left more than 50 crew dead or missing is intensifying fears that Russian companies searching for oil in remote areas are unprepared for emergencies - and could cause a disastrous spill in the pristine waters of the Arctic.Only four months ago, Russian energy giant Gazprom sent Russia's first oil platform to the environmentally sensitive region, and industry experts and environmentalists warned it is unfit for the harsh conditions and is too far from rescue crews to be reached quickly in case of an accident. They are demanding Russia put Arctic oil projects on hold.Russia is the world's largest oil producer, but it extracts most of its oil onshore, with no more than 2 percent of its production coming from mature offshore fields in the warm Black and Caspian seas and relatively new fields just off Sakhalin Island in the far east.As Russia's core oil fields in Eastern Siberia are depleted, companies are looking north. The government hopes that up to 80 million tons of oil will be produced annually in the Arctic by 2030.Russia is trying to assert jurisdiction over parts of the Arctic, which ...

Ship with eight people aboard sank early Sunday in a fierce storm The ship "Ginga" sank in the La Perfuse Strait, which divides the southern part of the Russian island of Sakhalin from the northern part of the Japanese island of Hokkaido.The eight aboard the ship are five Russians and three Indonesians. Two of the three dead bodies were identified as Russian citizens with the other remaining unidentified.According to the ministry, a joint search operation conducted by Russian and Japanese rescuers is underway."The Russian search and rescue group comprises the Atlas rescue vessel, the Ozersk refrigerator ship, the shipping boats Paliya and Zaliv Vasilyeva, and also a Mi-8 helicopter, while the Japanese team includes the REBUN patrol boat and a plane," the ministry said.It added that the emergencies center in the Russian Far East received a distress call from the ship at 22:40 Moscow time (1840 GMT) on Saturday, when north-west winds of 14 meters per second were blowing in the area.Itar-tass news agency said the ship, supposedly a fishing boat, was registered in Panama.Last week, a Russian floating oil rig capsized and sank in the same water due to bad weather, leaving 17 people killed and 36 others missing.Source: ...

53 people are declared dead or missing The tragedy with the jack-up rig "Kolskaya" in the Sea of Okhotsk is the largest accident in the history of the Russian oil and gas sector. 53 people are declared dead or missing.This is the largest number of casualties in an accident the Russian oil sector has ever experienced, says Boris Nikitin from the Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas. The last big accident happened in the Caspian Sea in 1957, when 22 people died when an oil rig overturned and sank.Nikitin states that the number on people aboard "Kolskaya" during the towing operations was too high. - There are two teams on a floating drilling rig - one is responsible for the rig as a vessel, the other for the drilling operation. When they have finished drilling operations, the drilling team should leave the rig and only those responsible for the rig during towing should stay aboard, he explains to RBC.The Russian Federal Investigation Committee has published a list over 11 dead that have been identified. 8 of these come from Murmansk. At least 32 of the crew of 67 came from the Murmansk region.Meanwhile, in the Sea of Okhotsk, ...

At least four people have died and about 50 are missing At least four people have died and about 50 are missing after an oil drilling rig sank in freezing seas in the Russian far east.The Kolskaya rig was being towed some 200km (125 miles) off Sakhalin island when it capsized in a fierce storm.Fourteen people have been rescued alive but it is feared the rig overturned before the rest of the 67 people on board could escape on to life rafts.Rescue efforts have been hampered by poor weather conditions.Helicopters and a plane helped scour the area amid high winds and waves of up to 12ft (4m) but the search was halted as night fell.Empty life rafts "According to reports from the scene of the rescue operation, the Kolskaya platform has sunk completely," the regional head of the emergencies ministry, Taimuraz Kasayev, told a news briefing.The accident in temperatures of -17C at around 14:00 local time (0200 GMT) in the Sea of Okhotsk happened as the rig was being towed from the eastern peninsula of Kamchatka to Sakhalin by an icebreaker and a tug.An unnamed regional emergencies ministry spokesman told the AFP news agency that the rig's portholes had been ...

Russian drilling rig sank with 67 people on board The owner of a Russian drilling rig which sank with 67 people on board in ice-cold seas said a raft has been seen in the water.The Kolskaya, which was working for state-controlled gas exporter Gazprom, sank whilst in transit 200km off Russia's Sakhalin island in the far east of the country.The four vessels and accompanying air support sent to the rig's aid were only able to rescue 14 people, whilst another 16 bodies were retrieved, as efforts were hindered by 20ft high waves and temperatures of -7 degrees Celsius.Rescuers had said it would be a "miracle" if anyone was found alive in the Sea of Okhotsk, which is a vast expanse of water more than twice the size of France.But slim hopes of finding survivors were raised when Andrei Bobrov - a spokesman for the owner of the rig - said navy aircraft had seen four orange rafts floating in the area."Aircraft from the Pacific fleet have found a raft. There are people on it," he said, adding that "it is impossible to say" whether anyone was alive after more than 24 hours adrift in such extreme conditions.The Emergencies Ministry, which ...