Russian mid-sized oil firm Tatneft has decided against building a new oil terminal on the northern White Sea and will focus instead on constructing a smaller outlet in the Baltic Sea port of Kaliningrad.
AK&M news agency quoted Tatneft's general director Shafagat Takhautdinov on August 17 as saying the firm had received all necessary approvals, including from environmentalists, to build a terminal in Kaliningrad, Russia's western enclave.
The outlet will have a capacity of 800,000 tonnes of crude oil and fuel oil per year and storage tanks of 48,000 tonnes. Tatneft may need export capacity of its own if the government decides to go ahead with its long-delayed plan to ban the firm from mixing its high-sulphur and heavy crude with lighter oil from Siberia in export pipelines.
The decision would force Tatneft to refine more crude at home and resort only to alternative transport means, such as rivers and railways, to deliver its crude to export outlets.
Kaliningrad, which is already home to three export outlets, including LUKOIL's Svetly, specialises in crude oil, gas oil, gasoline and gas condensate shipments. All volumes are supplied by rail.
Tatneft's new terminal will be located near Svetly.
The scrapped plan for a terminal on the White Sea foresaw a med-sized oil products terminal in the port of Severodvinsk, a city which is home to a submarine shipyard and has been closed to foreigners since Soviet times.

Copyright Reuters, 2005

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