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Russian state-owned company Rosneft is reported to have offered a 100,000-tonne Urals URL-NWE-E crude cargo for loading in Ust-Luga at the end of November- early December.

The tender, which closes on November 11th, is said to be the first crude oil cargo that Russia will load at Ust-Luga's new Baltic terminal. Ust-Luga is the final destination of the second phase of the Baltic Pipeline System (BPS-2).

Fuel oil

Ust-Luga's new oil product terminal was launched in test mode in January 2011. The first vessel to load fuel oil from the facility was the product carrier SCF Neva, owned by Sovcomflot, on 31st January 2011.

The ice class 1A SCF Neva, loaded a cargo of 44,000 tonnes of fuel oil and departed from Ust-Luga heading for the port of Tallinn, Estonia.

Commenting on the first loading operation at the time, Andrey Babahanov, director of fleet operations for OAO Sovcomflot, said: "Successful loading of fuel oil aboard the tanker SCF Neva on 31 January is a trial operation. In close coordination with the cargo owners and the port operators, we needed to check the functioning of all services and systems of Russia's new oil products terminal. The data obtained during the handling of the tanker SCF Neva will be taken into account when the loading of large tankers is arranged in the port of Ust-Luga."

Situated on the Luga River, approximately 110 kilometres west of St. Petersburg, Ust-Luga is located practically on the border between the Russian Federation and the European Union.

The deep water area of the port (17 metres) together with the 3,700-metre approach canal make Ust-Luga port the only Russian port on the Baltic Sea capable of admitting dry-cargo vessels with a deadweight of up to 75,000 tonnes and liquid cargo carriers with a deadweight of up to 120,000 tonnes.

The port is expected to play an important 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.

There are currently six terminals operating in Ust-Luga port: a coal transshipment terminal, the Universal transloading complex, a terminal for technical sulphur transshipment, a motor-railway ferry complex, the actively developing Yug-2 Multipurpose transloading complex and the 'Factor’ timber terminal.

The new oil export terminal is operated by JSC Rosneftbunker, a business unit of Gunvor Group. In November 2010, Rosneftbunker signed a credit line agreement with Vnesheconombank worth US$200 million to complete the financing of the Ust-Luga liquid bulk cargo facility.

The terminal’s projected capacity is 30 million tonnes of exported oil products a year.