Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

You will find this interesting. Why is Russia planning on expanding Novorossisk which would include adding tankers when they are already hampered by the limitations on tanker passage imposed by Turkey in the Bosphorus Strait?

Russia must be planning on heading across the Black Sea to the Balkans.

Novorossisk has just opened a new oil terminal, linked to the pipeline network of Russian monopoly Transneft, and is considering further expansion.



The trans-Balkan pipeline passes through what is known as corridor 8--traversing very near the borders between Macedonia, Kosovo and the Presevo Valley. (see map) Furthermore, it is to be connected with another series of pipelines, some of them Soviet-era pipelines. A major one of these will pass down the Presevo Valley--known as corridor 10-- connecting with the AMBO pipeline precisely at these same critical borders. This system of pipelines not only is designed to transport petroleum to sea ports for shipping abroad, but extends into the heart of Europe. Two branches of the AMBO line jut into Greece--one to Thessalonika, the other to a terminal on the west coast.





Russia's Main Sea Port In Need Of Major Overhaul
AFP: 8/8/2004
by Lucie Godeau

NOVOROSSISK, Russia, Aug 8 (AFP) - Novorossisk, Russia's leading port, located on the Black Sea and until recently the sole maritime outlet for Russian crude oil exports, is in dire need of investment if it wants to maintain its importance.

On a central dock, a crane unloads a cargo of sugar and drops it in rail cars. Rolls of aluminium nearby head overseas.

A few kilometers (miles) away, oil freighters pull up to the Sheskharis terminal. Cargo ships await their turn to be brought to dockside.

Last year 66 million tonnes of merchandise, of which 78 percent was oil and petroleum products, passed through the main commercial port operator NCSC, and volumes are growing an average five million tonnes a year.

Novorossisk has been Russia's main maritime window to the south, on the Black Sea, since the end of the Soviet Union.

"It represents a strategic axis. It's the shortest distance for Russian products toward Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America," said port spokesman Mikhail Volkhin.

Through it transits a quarter of Russian oil exports as well as the crude from the Caspian Sea.

But the port, partially privatized in 1992, has Sovie-era installations ill-suited to its development.

"Rapid changes are needed... The main problem is the rail and road network, which is not up the port's ambitions," said Igor Jarinov, president of the city's chamber of commerce.

Situated deep inside a bay, the port of Novorossisk is squeezed by the Caucasian foothills and must share coastal space with a city of 204,000 residents.

The city lacks electricity, pipes and only has water four hours per day. In 2002, flooding partly caused by lack of water drainage killed dozens.

Neither the holding company Uralsib nor the state, the principal shareholders, "invest enough. There is a distortion between the pace of development of the port and the infrastructures," Jarinov said.

Prospects for further state investment are nil. The government announced recently it plans to sell its remaining stake of 20 percent in the port in 2005.

But nonetheless, Novorossisk is growing. It has just opened a new oil terminal, linked to the pipeline network of Russian monopoly Transneft, and is considering further expansion.

And the Caspian oil pipeline of consortium CPC, built by Kazkh, Russian, and Omani companies and the US giant Chevron-Texaco, is also funneling the black gold from Kazakhstan to Novorossisk. The pipeline currently transports 15 million tonnes of crude but it has a capacity of 68 million tonnes.

But for Transneft vice president Sergei Grigoriev, the transit of oil through Novorossisk, 47.6 millions tonnes in 2003, "has reached a peak".

And the port would be overtaken this year by the Primorsk terminal in the Gulf of Finland that opened on 2001, which was expected to transport more than 50 tonnes of crude, Grigoriev said.

The development of Novorossisk is already hampered by the limitations on tanker passage imposed by Turkey in the Bosphorus Strait between Turkey in Europe and Turkey and Asia.

The Turkish government said the limits are needed because of the risk of an ecological disaster in the strait where some 8,100 ships transit annually, while the traffic of giant tankers packed with hydrocarbons also threatens the security of the 1.5 million residents of Istanbul.

But the Russians see politics behind the decision, suspecting Turkey wants to strenthen its position on the oil market thanks to the Baku-Tbilissi-Ceyhan pipeline being built by a consortium led by British oil giant BP, with the backing of the US government.

Due to be completed in the first quarter 2005, the BTC pipeline is expected to pump up to one million barrels of oil a day from the Caspian Sea, through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to a tanker terminal at the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.


http://www.turkishpress.com/turkishpress/news.asp?ID=23993