Thanks for those news, rd77! I remember seeing her at the Yantar a couple of months ago & wondered why she's there.
From that pic there it's not easy to believe they gonna give her another life, especially when I was making those photos of her back then she looked as if preparing to go to scrap.

The MB-305 is to be completely rebuilt as an oceanographic research ship by the Yantar yard in Kaliningrad. The yard even set up a new keel laying:

http://en.portnews.ru/news/216251/

Hi, Stan! Properly painted Neftegaz'es are beautiful tugs indeed, but they sucked at efficiency. Main engines were not powerful enough, not much of tanks capacity, bow thruster wasn't effective enough, lack of stern thruster. Visibility from the bridge to the aft was very poor, plus obstructed by oversized funnels. I heard from a friend that worked on Neftegaz-31 of similar shape, that they use cameras to fully view the aft deck.
Since Neftegaz-51 they lengthened the bridge with a corridor to the aft bridge which was made between the funnels that were modified, replaced derrick with a deck crane, etc. But that wasn't good enough anyway.

Regards,
Denis

She won't win a beauty contest (her make-up is kind of messed up) but what a great lines! I like these Neftegaz type vessels