Odessa court seizes four floating drilling rigs in the Black Sea that were captured by Russia
The Primorsky District Court of Odessa seized four floating drilling rigs owned by the Chornomornaftogaz state company that were seized during the Russian annexation of the Crimea.
This was stated on the January 27th, 2017 Court’s decision that was published in the Unified State Register of court decisions.
The expropriation was imposed in the framework of criminal proceedings that started on December 14th, 2015, concerning the illegal transportation and the seizing of these rigs.
Among them are non-self-propelled floating jack-up rigs, a B-319 Ukraina (Nezalezhnist) and B-312, Petro Hodovanets, built in 2012 by Keppel Corporation (Singapore), as well as Syvash rigs, built in 1979 in Astrakhan (Russia) and Tavrida rigs, built in 1991 in Astrakhan and completed in 1995 in Mykolaiv.
On January 23rd, 2017, these floating rigs were recognized by police as physical evidence in these criminal proceedings. Earlier, on December 23rd, 2015, the floating jack-up rigs Petro Hodovanets and Ukraina were seized by the Pechersk District Court of Kyiv, at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office in the framework of the criminal proceedings from April 1st, 2014, on suspicion of abuses committed by the officials of the Ministry of Energy and Coal Mining, Naftogaz and Chornomornaftogaz during their purchase. According to the data of Chornomornaftogaz, Russia annually extracts 2 billion cubic meters of gas from the Black Sea shelf.