Global commodities trading house
Gunvor Group is said to have reached an agreement to sell its 50 percent shareholding in
Novorossiysk Fuel Oil Terminal LLC.
Russia's Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) stated on Monday that it had approved the sale to
Chernomortransneft, a subsidiary of the state-owned transport monopoly
Transneft.
Moscow-based non-governmental news agency Interfax cited Transneft spokesman, Igor Dyomin, as confirming that the company would be acquiring Gunvor's stake in the Black Sea fuel oil facility.
Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.
Gunvor, one of the world's leading oil trading houses, has been reducing its presence in the Russian market since the company's co-founder,
Gennady Timchenko, was hit with U.S. sanctions last year. Timchenko was reported to have sold his 43 percent stake in Gunvor to co-founder
Torbjörn Törnqvist the day before his name was placed on the first U.S. sanctions list on March 20, 2014.
Novorossiysk Fuel Oil Terminal has a storage capacity of 119,000 cubic metres and a throughput of 5 million tonnes a year. It began operating in 2012.
Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port, PJSC (NCSP/NMTP Group) controls the other 50 percent stake in the terminal. The company owns bunker supplier
JSC Flot NMTP - also known as PJSC Fleet of NCSP, which is the largest private towing and tugboat company in Russia, offering a range of fleet services including tug and towing services, bunkering, water and environmental protection services.
Ust-Luga
Earlier this year,
Gunvor also sold a 74 percent stake in OJSC Ust-Luga Oil, the operator of Ust-Luga Oil Products Terminal, to a company controlled by Andrei Bokarev, an investor in coal mining, transportation and industrial processes.
Gunvor purchased the Ust-Luga terminal in 2008. The facility, located on the Baltic Sea, has a capacity of more than 30 million metric tonnes per annum - including 20 million tonnes of dark oil products and 10 million tonnes of light products - and is considered to be the largest rail-to-ship terminal for petroleum products in the world.
Despite Gunvor's decision to divest, the port looks set to continue to play a key role in the transportation of oil products as it is one of the few Russian ports capable of providing access to large deadweight vessels to export processed oil products, thus removing the dependence on foreign export terminals.
