| To return Russian oil Shareholders of the Latvian company Ventspils Nafta (VN) no longer believe that Russia will ever resume oil exports through their terminal. According to the company's president, Janis Adamsons, it would be naive to believe that the situation will improve over time, since Russia is rapidly increasing its own transit capacity in the Baltic ports. So VN can only rely on deliveries by rail. True, even in this case, the shareholders of the Latvian company must find an investor in the near future. Meanwhile, Transneft has not yet received such proposals from them.
Ventspils Nafta is an oil terminal of the ice-free Latvian port of Ventspils with a throughput capacity of 16 million tons of oil and 12 million tons of oil products per year. 47.87% of the company's shares belong to Latvijas Naftas Tranzits (an association of enterprises involved in transshipment of oil and petroleum products, actually controlled by six entrepreneurs, and one of them, the mayor of Ventspils Aivars Lembergs, is in charge of operational management). Another 42.68% belongs to the Latvian government, of which 5% is transferred to the ownership of Latvijas Naftas Tranzits, which must pay for them within three years.
A year ago, Transneft began to reduce the volume of raw materials transshipped through the terminal, and since January of this year, the commission for access to main pipelines under the leadership of Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko has finally excluded this direction from the export schedule. A little later, representatives of the Russian transport company announced that they were ready to resume oil exports through Ventspils, but only if the terminal partially became the property of Transneft. According to the state-owned company, it is necessary to invest about $140 million in VN, but not being a shareholder of the port, the Russian side does not intend to do this. However, it later became known that Transneft received a letter in the spring in which VN shareholders offered to buy from them part of the stake in the company, which is soon planned to be separated from VN. This subsidiary, called Ventspils Nafta Terminals, will only deal with the transshipment of oil and petroleum products, since the activities of the entire VN concern, as its representatives say, are also related to printing, publishing and hotel business, real estate, and shipping. However, Transneft rejected this offer, considering the price of the package - $70 million - too high. Even the mediation of the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which sent a special note to the Russian Embassy in order to restore oil exports through the terminal, did not help.
Now the company's main hopes are placed on raw materials that arrive by rail. It is rail transportation, as Mr. Adamsons said at the recent meeting of VN shareholders, that will become the main source of income for the Latvian oil terminal. He also said that this year construction of a new railway overpass will begin in Ventspils, which is planned to be put into operation by the middle of next year. It will increase the terminal's cargo turnover from 12 million to 17 million tons of petroleum products per year. In the meantime, on average, the terminal receives about 300 thousand tons of oil and petroleum products every month by rail. True, in July cargo turnover reached a record 530 thousand tons. However, the profit VN expects to earn this year could be $30,000, up from $4.5 million last year.
Meanwhile, Russia is constantly increasing its own pipeline capacity. In particular, last month the Baltic Pipeline System (BPS) increased its transportation volume from 12 million to 18 million tons per year. By December this figure will reach 30 million tons, and by the middle of next summer - 42 million tons per year. It should be borne in mind that rail transportation pays for itself only when prices for raw materials are high.
According to Transneft, VN shareholders no longer contacted the Russian company with a repeated offer to sell part of the terminal’s shares. However, according to the vice-president of the company Sergei Grigoriev, Transneft is not very interested in this area now, since the issue of lack of export capacity, which was acute at the beginning of the year, has already been resolved. Previously, the vice president stated that in the middle of next year, after the expansion of the BTS, Transneft will finally lose interest in VN.
True, as some analysts previously stated, YUKOS also has a chance of buying shares in the oil terminal. The company itself does not comment on this information. In addition, in early July, US Ambassador to Latvia Brian Carlson, after a meeting with Latvian Minister of Economy Juris Lujans, said that American investors are ready to invest money in the port, but they are wary of VN’s unclear share capital structure. The Ambassador invited the Minister to visit the United States in the fall and introduce American entrepreneurs to business opportunities in Latvia. Vladimir SKRIPOV, Vilnius, Denis REBROV |
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