A ceremony of exploitation of a tanker Koroglu of the Caspian Shipping Company, Russian ship-building plant Krasnoe Sormovo (Nizhni Novgorod) was held in Baku on 14 August. It comes as the 4th vessel, built in line with the project of a tanker President Heydar Aliyev.
Aydin Bashirov, the head of Caspian Shipping Company (CSC), said that the cost of the tanker is $15,640,000. It is the first tanker of this class equipped with new inert gas systems, increasing the security of the cargo transportation. First the tanker will be commissioned in the delivery of oil products from the Turkmenbashi port. Further it will be used for delivery of Kazakh oil for its onward transportation via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. The last fifth tanker of this type Dada Gorgud will arrive in Baku early October 2006.
Attending the commissioning ceremony were Deputy Prime Minister
Abid Sharifov, Transport Minister Ziya Mammadov, the President of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, Rovnag Abdullayev, officials of the government and the Transport Ministry.
The tanker of the project, referred to river-sea class, has been equipped with 12 cargo tanks and one flow tank, has water ballast tanks on two boards and dual bottom. Its length is 152m, width 17.30m, height of the board 10.5m, immersion 6.99m, the speed on full load 10 knots. The deadweight of the tanker (13,000 tons) is the maximal for a vessel, which can be exploited in the Caspian without re-equipment of the port terminals.
