The intention of this development was to overcome the relatively short operating window of drillships during the ice-free season (100 to 110 days a year) and the water depth limitations of artificial dredged islands in the Canadian part of the Beaufort Sea.
In order to expedite the delivery of the vessels, Gulf Canada had already purchased the engines, gearboxes, shaft lines and propellers before signing the C$79 million shipbuilding contract for two hulls.
[7][8] The keel of newbuilding number 554 was laid at the Burrard-Yarrows Victoria shipyard on 9 June 1982 and the vessel was launched on 2 April 1983 as Kalvik,[1] Inuktitut for "wolverine", following a naming contest by Northern Territories school children.
[5] The icebreaker was delivered on 30 July 1983, slightly behind the original schedule which called for delivery in April when Gulf Canada's exploratory drilling program was set to begin.
[8] Her 4.8-metre (16 ft) LIPS Canada nickel aluminium bronze controllable pitch propellers are designed to transmit 9,564 hp (7,132 kW) of power per shaft to the water and produce a combined static bollard pull of about 1,590 kilonewtons (162 tf).
During icebreaking operations, the ice friction is reduced by lubricating the hull-ice interface with a 750 kW (1,010 hp) low-pressure air bubbling system developed by Wärtsilä.
Twelve wells alone were drilled in the Amauligak prospect, the most significant oil and gas field discovered in the region, but the high expectations for the Beaufort Sea were not met: the area was characterized by a large number of small, widely scattered resources.
[17] However, the company decided to retain the ownership of Kalvik while her sister ship, Terry Fox, was sold to the Canadian Coast Guard following a two-year lease.
[20] In September 2001, Arctic Kalvik was contracted by Crowley Maritime to assist towing the cold-stacked Concrete Island Drilling System (CIDS) Glomar Beaufort Sea I from Prudhoe Bay to Sovetskaya Gavan in the Russian Far East.
The submersible gravity-based structure, which also dated back to the 1980s oil exploration in the Arctic, would be rebuilt as the drilling and production platform Orlan for Exxon Neftegas's Sakhalin-I project.
[26] According to MSCO, the acquisition of Vladimir Ignatyuk in July 2003 marked the first time in the history of modern Russia when an icebreaker was owned by a private commercial company instead of a state-controlled entity.
[28][29] With the original Beaufort Sea offshore fleet disbanded and sold overseas, the oil company had to source the icebreaker all the way from Murmansk to complete the one-day tow from Thetis Bay anchorage to the Paktoa C-60 drilling site.
[30] In 2006, Vladimir Ignatyuk was chartered by Royal Dutch Shell together with a flotilla of other contracted icebreakers from Russia, Finland and Sweden to support the company's oil exploration activities in the Beaufort Sea.
[39] In August 2011, National Science Foundation (NSF) contracted Vladimir Ignatyuk to support the annual break-in and resupply mission to McMurdo Station in Antarctica.
After the one-year fixed contract worth $11,558,554, NSF and MSCO agreed to exercise the optional extension although the shipping company was initially reluctant due to concerns of the icebreaker's ability to operate in Antarctic pack ice,[42] and Vladimir Ignatyuk returned to McMurdo also during the 2012–2013 season.
[43][44] In 2017, Vladimir Ignatyuk made three voyages to Franz Josef Land to transport construction material, equipment and spare parts, and food to the Arctic archipelago.