Arctic crude oil tanker named in Vladivostok

A naming and flag-raising ceremony for the 41,012dwt crude oil tanker, Mikhail Lazarev, has been held by Sovcomflot in Vladivostok. The tanker has Russia’s Arc7 ice class, enabling independent operation in ice up to 1.8m thick and temperatures as low as -45°C.
The248.9m-long vessel will carry crude oil for the Novy Port project under a long-term agreement between Sovcomflot and Gazprom Neft. The Mikhail Lazarev is the latest in the Shturman Albanov series of tankers, designed for year-round navigation from the Gulf of Ob to Novy Port in the Kara Sea. The first three tankers in this trade were delivered in 2016 and have now shipped more than 9.5 million tonnes of crude oil along the Northern Sea Route. They were designed especially for navigation in the Gulf of Ob where water depths are shallow.