The LUKOIL's
Varandey fixed offshore ice resistant oil terminal (FOIROT) has been
registered in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s most northerly
continuously operating oil terminal, namely, 69 degrees 03 minutes 11 seconds of
the northern latitude.
The FOIROT is assembled at a 17-meter depth in the Barents Sea
located 22 km off the coast of the Nenets Autonomous District. It is more than 50 meters tall
and has a total weight of over 11,000 tons, which includes a substructure with living
quarters, a mooring cargo handling system (MCHS) with a jib and a helicopter
platform.
The FOIROT is connected to two underwater pipelines,
820 mm. in diameter, to pump the oil from the onshore tank battery
with a capacity of
325,000 cu.m. The FOIROT was
constructed by OOO LUKOIL-Kaliningradmorneft steelworks, a fabrication facility
for metal structures used in construction. The FOIROT capacity totals 12 million
tons of oil per year. Its first oil was exported on
June 9, 2008. As of October 28, 2011, 20.4 million tons of oil had been loaded onto 295
tankers.