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Pacific-Asian symposium on shelf technologies opens in Vladivostok

Vladivostok has been chosen as the venue of the symposium in view of an active development of the shelf of the Far Eastern seas
Photo ITAR-TASS
Photo ITAR-TASS

VLADIVOSTOK, October 3 (Itar-Tass) — A Pacific-Asian symposium on shelf technologies opened here on Wednesday. Specialists of Russia, the Republic of Korea (ROK), Japan, China, the United States, Canada, Norway, and Singapore will consider matters aimed at developing resources that are hidden inside the shelf of various countries, by means of technologies for the building of offshore platforms, pipelines, a fleet and other equipment used in the production and transportation of oil and gas.

Lev Kim, director of the symposium's working group, has said the forum is being attended by more than 50 prominent scientists and practice experts in the field of shelf development. A half of them are foreigners.

Vladivostok has been chosen as the venue of the symposium in view of an active development of the shelf of the Far Eastern seas. On the shelf of Sakhalin Island, the production of hydrocarbon fuel has been conducted since 1999. Four offshore platforms have been installed in the Sea of Okhotsk. Yet another one will appear there in 2013.

The foundations for these platforms have been built in the Far Eastern cities of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Bolshoi Kamen, and Nakhodka while the superstructure was made in the ROK. Vessels which now engage in the transportation of hydrocarbon fuel produced on the Sakhalin shelf were also built at foreign shipyards.

Russia has now set a task to itself to create all the facilities for the development of shelf deposits on the basis of domestic resources. With this end in view, a megashipyard is being established in Bolshoi Kamen to make tankers with a deadweight of up to 350,000 tonnes. Offshore platforms and other equipment, intended for the shelf of Arctic seas, will be also built there.