United Shipbuilding Company (USC) intends to recover from Rosneft the damage caused to the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov in the accident of the floating dock. This was announced today to journalists by USC President Alexei Rakhmanov. “We will have to do this [sue]. The Ministry of Defense does not accept insurance costs, respectively, repair of the ship was not insured, so we will have to work for us that we need to file appropriate claims through the fault of those who could not finish the docking operation in full, ”Rakhmanov quotes TASS.
On the night of October 30, when the Kuznetsov repair was being removed from the PD-50 floating dock belonging to the 82nd Ship Repair Plant (SRZ) in Murmansk, the dock was flooded in an emergency mode (with a skew), which caused a heavy crane to fall on the deck Kuznetsova. The ship received damage to the flight deck.
According to information disclosure, since March 2018, 99.99% of the shares of the plant in Murmansk belong to RN-Aktiv, a subsidiary of Rosneft. The company intends to use the plant for the construction of concrete foundations for drilling platforms capable of operating in the Arctic.
“You should not make hasty conclusions about the causes and depth of the damage. It is necessary to wait for the results of the work of the interdepartmental commission to determine the causes of the incident, ”a representative of the shipyard told Vedomosti. A source familiar with the investigation of the incident, said that representatives of Rosneft had already flown to the 82nd shipyard.
Rakhmanov noted that nothing threatens the deadlines of the Kuznetsov repair: the damage done to the ship, although extensive, is not expensive. “70 tons fell to the deck. The fall of the 70-ton design left a hole of 4 to 5 m. But this is a structural structure of the ship, which is repaired easily and quickly, that is, we do not feel that damage to the deck structures is of any importance, ”said the head of USC.
"The lawsuit will be on such an amount, which concerns those damages that were caused as a result of the fall of this crane and the abnormal descent from the dock," Rakhmanov said.
According to the latest data, four people were injured in the accident, one of them was in critical condition in intensive care, the other was hospitalized in a state of moderate severity. Another person is missing. The TFR opened a criminal case under the article on violation of safety rules in the conduct of work, resulting in the death of a person through negligence.
As Rakhmanov told Interfax, USC intends to recover through court from the shipyard the amount of damage actually caused to the ship, because it was not insured. “We consider it inappropriate and premature to make statements before the completion of the commission’s work, which ascertains the causes of the incident,” retorted Rosneft spokesman Mikhail Leontyev.
According to the USC manager, the PD-50 was used for docking repairs not only of the only Russian aircraft carrier, but also of other large ships - the nuclear-powered cruiser Peter the Great, the cruiser Marshal Ustinov, the destroyer Admiral Ushakov and several large anti-submarine ships. The unit of the ships in the Northern Fleet does not disclose accurate data on the number of ships in the line of the Ministry of Defense.
According to the USC manager, at least one more ship had to undergo dock repair in PD-50 before the end of the year. Obviously, now either the repair will be postponed until the dock is raised (if this happens), or a way to repair it at the facilities of other fleets will be found. A possible transfer of the ship for repair to the Pacific Fleet takes many months, which significantly increases the repair period and, therefore, reduces the fleet’s combat capability, the source adds. Although the Northern Fleet also has other facilities for repairing nuclear submarines, the USC manager says and the fleet officer confirms.