SEOUL, KOREA - Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering will be a major partner to a project to transform an old nuclear submarine dockyard in Vladivostok in Russia's Primorsky Krai into a large shipyard capable of building liquefied natural gas tankers and other ships.

 

According to banking sources and DSME on November 18, the governments of Russia and Korea agreed on the 13th in a summit meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his counterpart Park Geun-hye of Korea.

 

The dockyard that DSME has agreed to modernize is the Zvezda shipyard in Bolshoy Kamen, near Vladivostok. A DSME official said of the deal, "This is part of the Russian government's wider plan to create an industrial cluster in the Russian Far East. We are going to help with the procedures for shipyard modernization, operational know-how, and manufacturing technology. But the details have not been fixed as this is a plan proposed only a few week ago."

 

The reason the Russian government is pushing to establish as many shipyards as possible in the Far East is that it will need more ships to carry energy resources and others through the newly opening Northern Sea Route. But the same DSME official said, "Although Rosneft [the oil company leading the shipyard's modernization initiative] is asking for help in design capabilities in the long run, we may limit ourselves to giving assistance to building the shipyard."