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For Murmansk shipbuilders, future is either Navy or Oil

Shipyard No 82 in Roslyakovo is balancing between Rosneft and the Northern Fleet.

The yard has been acquired by Rosneft, but the shipbuilders in Roslyakovo will still continue to serve the Northern Fleet.

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Shipyard No 82 in Roslyakovo outside Murmansk city will not lay down its work with navy vessels anytime soon, despite the takeover of the yard by oil company Rosneft. According to Aleksey Rakhmanov, head of previous yard owner United Shipbuilding Corporation, the Roslyakovo shipbuilders will keep up their operations with military vessels for at least another 3-5 years, a press release from the company reads.

“Nothing will change tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, people will continue to work with military construction orders the way they have done before”, Rakhmanov said during a recent visit to the yard, the Murmansk government press service informs. He confirms that the United Shipbuilding Corporation will lease the construction equipment it needs from Rosneft as long as necessary.

The Shipyard No 82 in Roslyakovo has the biggest dry dock in northern Russia and is the only place where the Northern Fleet can conduct repair works on its biggest vessels. The yard has full order books for several years ahead.

Rosneft in 2013 announced that it intended to take over the yard as part of its bid to develop a base for its Arctic offshore oil activities. The new base is to include various functions among them service facilities for drilling rigs and oil platforms. The deal was formalized in a government decret signed in February 2015.

The takeover of the yard by Rosneft has not been well received by locals, who in April this year wrote an open letter to President Vladimir Putin. In the letter, which was signed by more than 300 yard employees, the company warns against the transformation of the facility from military yard to oil base. This will make it far harder for the Northern Fleet to conduct repair operations of its fleet, they argue. Shipyard No 82 has since it was established in 1947 been a military enterprise.