Astrakhan Branch News

Vessels of the Astrakhan Branch dredging fleet start dredging operations on the Volga-Caspian Marine Shipping Canal

Vessels of the Astrakhan Branch dredging fleet start dredging operations on the Volga-Caspian Marine Shipping Canal

In order to maintain navigational depths of the Volga-Caspian Marine Shipping Canal and comply with the plan of dredging operations on the Volga-Caspian Marine Shipping Canal in 2018 three dredgers of the Astrakhan Branch, the Pyotr Sablin, the Artemiy Volynsky and the Ivan Cheremisinov, have started the works.

The Pyotr Sablin dredger will work on the area of 143.2-144.2 km of the Volga-Caspian Shipping Canal, on the western part of the canal. The Ivan Cheremisinov will work on the area of 158.0-159.0 km of the Volga-Caspian Marine Shipping Canal. The Artemiy Volynsky dredger will work on the area of 133.75-134.45 km of the Volga-Caspian Marine Shipping Canal. The dredgers will work to restore seabed levels of the corresponding areas of up to -5.9 meters.

By using these dredgers, the Astrakhan Branch is planning to extract over 3.2 million cubic meters of bottom soil. By involving the dredging fleet of other organizations totally the dredging operations in 2018 is expected to be amounted to the level of five million cubic meters.

All dredging operations are carried out by the Astrakhan Branch in strict compliance with the project of dredging repair operations on the area of 0-188 km of the Volga-Caspian Marine Shipping Canal for the period till year 2018 that has received positive findings of the expert commission of the State Environmental Appraisal Board on the project documentation No 33 of June 17, 2017 approved by Order No 246/OD of June 17, 2016 of the Russian Federal Supervisory Natural Resources Management Service Department for the Southern Federal District has obtained.