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Russian bunker supplier, Baltic Fuel Company (BFC), has been granted a permit to develop an artificial plot of land at the Marine Oil Terminal 'Turukhtannye Islands' in St. Petersburg, by the country's Federal Marine and River Transport Agency (Rosmorrechflot), PortNews reports.

The latest development follows BFC's announcement last month, on April 8, that it had signed an agreement with Rosmorrechflot to create an artificial plot of land of 1.43 hectares at the Turukhtanniye Islands facility.

The April agreement was signed for 30 months. During this period, BFC will be required to publish work documentation on the project, carry out land reclamation, backfilling and sheet piling operations, as well as filling the plot of land.

Once construction is completed, Rosmorrechflot is to provide BFC with a permit commissioning the artificially created plot of land.

The declaration of intent to invest in the project was rubber-stamped by Rosmorrechflot on July 30, 2014. Rosmorrechflot's decree, dated September 22, 2014, approved the project's planning documentation. A year later, on September 1, 2015, the project documentation and engineering study results for the project successfully passed the state expert review by the Main State Expert Review Board of Russia (Glavgosexpertiza).

The total cost of the project is estimated at over RUB 3 billion (US$45.35 million).

BFC's fuel terminal currently consists of a 7.3-hecare plot of land and two berths for the transshipment of oil products. In 2013, it handled some 500,000 tonnes, and the figure is currently around 1.5 million tonnes per year. The facility's annual throughput is expected to increase to 2.4 million tonnes by 2017, and to 4-5 million tonnes by 2020.

The terminal is designed to be used for the handling of oil products (M-100 and M-40 fuel oil, and diesel fuel), and for the supply of bunker fuel to tankers and bunkering vessels with capacity of up to 20,000 tonnes and a draft of 7 to 9 metres. Transfers of fuel to bunkering vessels account for 25 percent of the total volume, according to BFC.