In August 2013 Instar Logistics specialists proceeded to the compli-cated operation of transporting the hydrocracking and hydroprocessing units from Canada to the Angarsk Refinery, Irkutsk Oblast. The operation took almost a year and a half to fulfill.
It was required to demount the units at the operating Shell refinery not far from Montreal and send them to Russia. In fact, the whole plant with a total weight of 8,000 tons had to be relocated. Half of this weight was made up by outsized items (over 150) with a total volume of 17,000 cubic meters. The 430-ton column was the heaviest unit. Out-of-gauge items were carried in 216 containers.
To prepare the equipment for shipping, the specialists engaged in the great preliminary work: they developed the method statements for crane operations to deinstall the units and engineering solutions of transport pack-ing of the cargo depending on the transportation requirements; designed and manufactured transport cradles for overweight and outsized loads; ob-tained two customs classifications for each of the units; purchased 40-foot containers. Tubes and flanges had to be removed to reduce the width and height of the equipment. The specialists also had to clean the items from petrochemical products and remove concrete off the column and reactor foundations.
Bulky and heavy lift items were consolidated in one of the terminals of Montreal Port to be shipped on Hansa Heavy Lift Tokyo crane vessel as a single lot. These cargoes were delivered to Rotterdam for temporary stor-age awaiting the Northern Sea Route opening. Then the units were loaded on two ST river-sea vessels and supplied to the Port of Krasnoyarsk in transit through Saint-Petersburg.
The remaining items were delivered from Montreal directly to Saint-Petersburg. The OOG cargoes were handled in accordance with the original technical plan. In particular, seven columns weighing from 43 to 90 tons and 29-43 meters long were reloaded by two tandem Liebherr cranes. Then the lot was carried to the destination by multimodal transport.
It was initially planned to use the sheerleg with a lifting capacity of 600 tons available in Krasnoyarsk to discharge the extra heavy cargoes. But then it was decided to take lease of SV Trans’ crawler crane Mani-towoc-18000. It could lift up to 750 tons and was fitted with a 42-meter long boom. Unique reinforcement of the existing quay wall designed to withstand all required loads was arranged to perform the handling opera-tions. But one had to wait for the unloading to take place for almost two months – transportation ordering party faced financial problems.
Reloading of all oversize and heavy items was completed by SV Trans in September 2014. A total of 10 out-of-gauge units were loaded onshore. It included the heaviest load V-3302 (weight 421 tons, length 33 meters), the second column V-3904 (weight 344 tons, length 29 meters) and the third item V-3301 (weight 335 tons, length 30 meters). The rest of the oil and gas equipment reloaded by the crawler crane on self-propelled transport modules weighed 82-110 tons and was 12-32 meters long.
The crawler crane was delivered to the handling site by SV Trans on its own vehicles. The installation team prepared the crane for work in a week.
Upon successful unloading of the units, the heaviest cargoes had to be sent from Krasnoyarsk to the refinery site in Angarsk. The considerable distance could be covered only by railway. Together with RZD the engi-neers drew up and agreed upon the plans of distribution and securing of loads on coupled transporters: 32-axle coupling railway transporter, type 3978-3979 and 24-axle coupling railway transporter, type 3976-3977.
The reactor V-3904, 3,826 millimeters in diameter, was the most diffi-cult item to transport. Loaded on the railway transporter it became an ex-tra bulky cargo which made its carriage extremely expensive. The heaviest and the highest load – reactor V-3302 – could be moved only on coupled transporters with 480 tons of lifting capacity. But since the minimum length of the barrel shell to be carried on this transporter is 33.2 meters, a special adapter was manufactured to fix the reactor.