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Prirazlomnaya up for modernization

The ice-classed tanker “Mikhail Ulyanov” loading oil from Russia's first Arctic offshore oil field Prirazlomnoye in the Pechora Sea.

Less than two months after the first oil was shipped from Gazprom’s controversial Prirazlomnaya platform in the Pechora Sea, the company announces a tender for modernization of the installation.

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Gazprom Neft Shelf has announced a tender on project documentation for modernization of the Prirazlomnaya oil platform in the Pechora Sea.

The tender is worth more than 331 million rubles (€6.9 million). The documentation should be ready by the end of 2016, the tender on the web site for state procurements reads.

The Prirazlomnaya platform was towed from Murmansk to its designated place in the Pechora Sea in August 2011. The platform has been under construction at the Sevmash shipyard in Severodvinsk since 1998 and was moved to Murmansk for completion in November 2010. The platform laid idle in the Pechora Sea for more than two years, following technical problems that lead to several delays in start-up of production.

The first 70,000 tons of oil were shipped from the Prirazlomnoye field in April.

Prirazlomnaya received the world’s attention in September 2013, when two journalists and 28 activists from Greenpeace, later dubbed “the Arctic 30”, were arrested and imprisoned in Murmansk for over two months following a protest against Arctic drilling.The whole crew og Greenpaece’s vessel “Arctic Sunrise”, were first charged with of piracy. Later this was replaced with charges of hooliganism, which according to Russian law have a maximum punishment of seven years. The charges were dropped in December 2013.