The Norwegian Coastal Administration has been commissioned to build the Stad ship tunnel, the world's first full-scale ship tunnel, whose aim is to improve accessibility and safety for sea transport past Stad,  the most weather-exposed and most dangerous stretch of sea along the Norwegian coast.  

The ship tunnel will be built where the Stad peninsula is at its narrowest, between Moldefjorden and Kjødepollen, in Vanylvsfjorden. The tunnel will be 1.7 km long (2.2 km with entry areas), 50 m high and with a width of 36 m − which means that vessels up to the size of the Kystruten/Hurtigruten will be able to sail safely past Stadlandet.  

The building project itself must be carried out by a main contractor through a turnkey contract. It will be announced in 2024 and construction may start in 2025.  

In addition, the project must be optimized to extract other benefits. The reuse of approx. 3 million cubic meters of solid rock, which corresponds to approx. 5.4 million cubic meters of blasted rock masses stone masses, is part of this optimisation.  

The plan is that approximately half will be used near the tunnel, for the entrance areas and for new municipal business areas in Kjøde and Lesto, while the  the other half will be distributed to develop new or existing ports and business areas in the municipalities around the ship tunnel.  

In the municipalities around the ship tunnel, there is a shortage of rock masses and there is great interest among potential recipients. Overall, requests have been received for more rock mass than is to be taken out of the tunnel.  

The Norwegian Coastal Administration was recently around Vanylven,  Stad, Kinn and Sande municipalities and visited business players who want to get masses of rock from the Stad ship tunnel. The Norwegian Coastal Administration aims to have ready a priority list of recipients who can expect stone from the ship tunnel early in the new year.  

In the original order to the Coastal Administration, it is stated that some stone masses will be used near the tunnel openings, and that the rest will be deposited on the seabed in the Moldefjord. But in a region where there is a shortage of masses and commercial land, efforts must be made to find a new use for the stone masses from the Stad ship tunnel instead to deposit  them on the seabed. 

But loading stone on board in barges and transporting it by sea to industrial facilities is expensive. Therefore, the Norwegian Coastal Administration is dependent on the fact that the stone for the two business areas on Lesto and Kjøde can be transported by dump truck, straight out of the tunnel opening. This is much cheaper than transshipment to smaller trucks or to barge transport.    

However, it is proving difficult to get approval to drive trucks on the county roads in the area, because it is basically not allowed to drive dump truck traffic on Norwegian roads.  

The Coastal Administration is in dialogue with the Norwegian Road Administration about getting an exemption from the regulations.  

For further information please click here and no/132 for the tunnelbuilder archive. Visit https://kystverket.no/en. 46/23.