MOSCOW: Russia plans to halt exports of oil products from foreign ports in the Baltic by 2018, the head of oil pipeline monopoly Nikolai Tokarev told President Vladimir Putin on Monday. According to a report from Reuters, Tokarev said exports of crude products through non-Russian ports will fall to 5 mill tonnes this year from 9 mill tonnes in 2015 and by 2018 will stop completely.
“We will be shipping through our own ports as there is surplus capacity,” Tokarev told Putin, according to a transcript of the meeting published on the Kremlin website, translated by Reuters.
More than a decade ago, the giant Primorsk terminal and nearby Ust-Luga allowed Russia to suspend exports of crude via non-Russian Baltic ports. Since then, Russia has been gradually cutting exports of oil products via foreign ports, such as Latvia’s Ventspils. If product flows are suspended, it would deal a blow to the transit revenues of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania and hit the world’s largest oil trader Vitol, which controls Ventspils, Reuters said.
But the move would boost several Russian ports. Ust-Luga, which has a capacity of more than 30 mill tonnes a year, is 74% controlled by billionaire Andrei Bokarev. Primorsk is operated by Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port Group. Vysotsk in the Leningrad Oblast (region), which belongs to Russia’s second-largest oil producer, is also likely to benefit.
