TEHRAN- National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) has overhauled 10 oil tankers since the beginning of current Iranian calendar year (March 21), the company’s managing director told Mehr news agency.

Nasrollah Sardashti also announced that two tankers have been already dry-docked for overhaul and as scheduled seven or eight more oil tankers will be overhauled by the yearend.

In this way, NITC will finish the overhaul operation of 20 oil tankers in the current Iranian calendar year, while the company had previously announced that the plan for this year is overhauling 12 tankers.

“We have not sent any tanker outside the country for overhaul in the present year”, Sardashti further emphasized.

In late July, the company successfully finished the overhaul operation of supertanker “DORE” after a month.

According to Sardashti, Iranian technicians managed to repair the oil supertanker “DORE” inside the country for the first time in the history of Iran’s shipping industry.

“Engines, generators, and electrical appliances all have been repaired and stained and will not require major repairs for the next five years,” Sardashti said.

In late June, the 320,000-ton oil supertanker DORE was successfully dry-docked in Bandar Abbas at Iran ISOICO to go through overhaul for the first time inside the country.

DORE belongs to the national Iranian oil tanker fleet and is a "giant oil tanker" with a length of 333 meters.

It was the first time that repair and maintenance services of a super oil vessel is assigned to a domestic repair yard.

According to NITC Technical Advisor Ali Mansourzadeh, before this Iranian technicians had successfully completed the overhauling and maintenance operations of a variety of smaller vessels in a 6-month period, including MARIA 3 tanker with a capacity of 13,600 cubic meters, POLARIS with a capacity of 45,000 tons, and ARK and ARGO each with a capacity of 100,000 tons.

However, due to some technological limitations, the repair operations of supertankers like DORE was carried out in foreign countries.

MA/MA