On October 20, 2022, Dmitry Ligatyuk and Evgeny Shaforostov, pilots of the Kaliningrad Directorate of the FSUE “Rosmorport” North-Western Basin Branch, successfully completed a complex pilotage of the towing caravan in the seaport of Kaliningrad.

The towing caravan included four tugs and an AMT Carrier barge with an oversize cargo – a topside structure of an oil platform. The oil platform was more than 60 m in width, which is twice the permitted vessel size for pilotage in the Kaliningrad Sea Canal (up to 32 m).

In order to perform the task safely, specialists of the Kaliningrad Directorate pilot service, together with the captain’s services in the seaport of Kaliningrad and the project developer, carried out painstaking preparatory calculation work that allowed to determine if the operation was possible and how many tugs was necessary for safe pilotage, as well as permissible restrictions on weather and other conditions.

In March 2022, a computer simulation of piloting the facility along the Kaliningrad Sea Canal and mooring it at the berth of LUKOIL-Kaliningradmorneft LLC was performed on the navigation simulator of the State Autonomous Professional Educational Institution “Admiral Senyavin Maritime Technical College”. The simulation results confirmed the calculations pilots of the Kaliningrad Directorate made about the possibility of safe piloting and mooring of the AMT Carrier barge with the transported oversize cargo.

The successful pilotage operation on the platform transportation will contribute to the realization of the project for the construction of an offshore stationary platform on the shelf plate of the Baltic Sea in order to develop the D33 oil field.