2018.-2022.
Estimated time of project implementation:
5 March 2018 - 4 January 2022
Project promoter:
Liepaja Special Economic Zone Authority
Total eligible project costs:
EUR 31 700 000, of which EUR 22 894 923.38 is EU Cohesion Fund, EUR 1 998 550.00 is pre-financing of the performance reserve, and EUR 6 806 521.47 is Liepaja SEZ Authority funding
The Port of Liepaja is a port of the comprehensive TEN-T network serving the EU internal market, where the implementation of the Cohesion Fund (CF) project "Deepening of the Port of Liepaja" has significantly increased the traffic of large tonnage vessels. In some cases, including water level fluctuations, ships have to leave Liepaja with a reduced safety margin (water depth below the ship's keel), which significantly increases the risk of a maritime accident.
In order not to jeopardise the safety of ships when leaving the port with a reduced safety margin, the Port of Liepaja companies regularly carry out final loading of ships in the port's outer raid using the ship-to-ship transhipment method. During an external port raid, ships are fully exposed to the open sea, thus endangering the ships involved in the cargo operation as well as the marine environment from pollution that may be caused by the cargo and oil products of the ship that are discharged into the sea as a result of the transhipment operation.
The problem would be solved by improving the port's water infrastructure, which includes the creation of an extension of the fairway - an anchorage point in the port's inner raid, which would allow ships to be finally loaded in the port's water area, where they are protected from the open sea by the port's hydraulic protection system. Improvements to the fairway, including dredging, widening and straightening, will ensure the safe passage of ships until they reach the protected area of the port's hydraulic defence structures - jetties and breakwaters.
The objective of the project "Improvement of the water infrastructure of the Port of Liepaja": to eliminate the constraints caused by the bottlenecks in the functioning of the European transport network infrastructure by implementing measures to improve the water infrastructure of the Port of Liepaja.
The following water infrastructure improvement measures will be implemented under the project:
Improvement of the shipping lane, including the creation of an anchorage in the Freeport area;
Rehabilitation and reconstruction of the Port's hydraulic structures - jetties and breakwaters, including the installation of navigation signs.
The activities carried out as a result of the project implementation will significantly improve the safety of large tonnage vessels when visiting the Port of Liepaja, thus reducing the potential losses of maritime traffic participants, including ship downtime and losses of importing countries' economies due to untimely receipt of cargo.
Project No 6.1.1.0/17/I/005 "Improvement of the water infrastructure of the Port of Liepaja" is implemented under the Operational Programme "Growth and Employment" under Specific Support Objective 6.1.1 "Increase the security level of large ports and improve the mobility of the transport network".
