On September 14, 2022, Andrey Thorn, Chief Engineer of the Ust-Luga Directorate of the FSUE “Rosmorport” North-Western Basin Branch, took part in an event dedicated to the unloading of a large-size cargo – a product cleaning bunker delivered to the seaport of Ust-Luga by barge.

The equipment is intended for a gas chemical complex under construction for processing ethane-containing gas and production of liquefied natural gas on the territory of Ust-Luga rural settlement of the Kingisepp municipality of the Leningrad Region.

A day earlier, pilots Valery Muravyev and Viktor Semenchevsky of the North-Western Basin Branch successfully completed the operation on piloting the vessel with this large-sized equipment. It was a unique operation because the barge-towed caravan with a length of more than 165 m, which included two tugs and a barge, had to be conducted with a width at the mouth of the river on the route not exceeding 60 m. Thanks to the professionalism and skill of the pilots of the branch, the caravan safely followed from the berth of the Ust-Luga container terminal to the place of unloading – the berth of the sea terminal of the Ust-Luga Production and Trading Company.

In order to successfully implement the delivering of the large-sized equipment to the seaport of Ust-Luga and unloading it at the unloading berth, the North-Western Basin Branch has carried out repair dredging works on the Approach Channel to the mouth of the Luga River using its own dredging fleet and contracting organizations' vessels from April 2022 to the present. As a result of the dredging, 138.1 cubic meters of bottom soil were seized, which allowed to reach depths of 6.6 m in the shallowest section of the shipping route for the barge-towed caravan.

After the heavy cargo is successfully loaded onto a specialized cargo platform and rolled ashore, the equipment will be delivered to its destination at the site of the complex under construction.