Pipeliners

01.03.2005 MosNews - Russia's Leningrad region in the country's north-west has approved plans to build three new oil terminals on the Gulf of Finland, it was reported late on Monday, Feb. 28. The construction of the terminals could boost Russia's export capacity to northwest Europe by 600,000 barrels per day by 2008.
Leningrad region surrounds the city of St. Petersburg and borders the Baltic Sea's Gulf of Finland. Regional authorities said on Monday that they approved construction applications from German-owned oil terminal operator Oiltanking and Russia's Severo-Zapadny Alliance. Russia's third-largest oil company, TNK-BP, was also granted permission to continue a feasibility study for its planned terminal, Reuters reported.
The Russian section of the Gulf of Finland has at least a dozen new oil export projects, and if they all come to fruition, total annual oil shipments on the Baltic could push beyond 170 million tons of oil a year or 3.4 million barrels per day. Russia has been pushing hard for new terminals in the north to avoid traditional routes through the Black Sea that pass via the congested Turkish straits. But experts fear the Baltic route could gradually become as crowded as the Bosporus due to the limited capacity of the Danish straits.
TNK-BP has said it plans to build a $175 million terminal in Ust-Luga on the gulf's southern coast to export up to 7.5 million tons a year of crude oil (150,000 barrels per dar), 4 million tons of fuel oil and 500,000 tons of gas oil per year.
The head of Oiltanking's Russian office, Boris Martynov, told a news conference on Monday his firm would spend $135 million to build a terminal. That will export a total of 7.5 million tons of oil and products (150,000 barrels per day), mainly crude oil and fuel oil, but also small volumes of gas oil and gasoline. "We are going to work with all Russian oil companies," said Martynov, declining to specify the planned key clients.
Leningrad region's deputy governor Grigory Dvas told the same news conference that Severo-Zapadny Alliance, which also obtained a building permit on Monday, wanted to build a $340-million terminal. That outlet would have a designed capacity to export around 200,000 barrels per day of crude oil —- of which 40 percent would be crude oil, 40 percent fuel oil and 20 percent gas oil.
Russia's most active Baltic Sea oil export hub is Primorsk, where capacity has more than tripled in less than two years to its current 1.1 million barrels per day. Other active routes include terminals at Vysotsk and Kaliningrad which belong to Lukoil Oil Company as well as the port of St. Petersburg itself.