“In 2015, Sibur ceased naphtha trading operations via the Ust-Luga terminal and replaced them with transhipment services maintaining the facility’s capacity load,” the group said with the release of its annual figures Wednesday.

Accordingly, it stopped buying naphtha for resale, providing transhipment services to suppliers instead.

“This is expected to result in a reduction in purchasing and export sales volumes from 2015,” Sibur said.

The move marks a U-turn after the group had almost tripled naphtha exports to 2.35 million mt (21 million bbl) last year, in the wake of the Ust-Luga terminal‘s end-2013 launch. Exports heavily relied on third-party sourcing, with purchases for resale amounting to 1.32 million mt.

This was only slightly less than the 1.46 million mt of naphtha that the group produced at its Russian fractionation facilities, with 7.2% annual growth amid expansion at Tobolsk in west Siberia. Its own petrochemical factories absorbed 691,633 mt, whereas sales to external domestic buyers shrank to a marginal 36,611 mt.

The group is selling its Ust-Luga transhipment assets to a consortium of investors, including the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Gazprombank and several unnamed foreign parties. A deal was signed in January and its closure is anticipated “within the year.”

The facility can handle up to 2.5 million mt/y of light oil products and 1.5 million mt/y of LPG.

Shipping intelligence underlines the change: While Sibur acted as both shipper (i.e., supplier) and exporter (charterer) of naphtha at Ust-Luga throughout 2014, year-to-date liftings from the two-berth facility have mostly involved third parties, among them Vitol, Gunvor, Litasco, Gazprom Neft as well as trading firms Crudex and Apogeo. Cargill and Trafigura were also named among exporters. The odd cargo, however, has still been attributed to Sibur.

The transfer in ownership appears not to affect the group’s buoyant export trade, which last year grew by one-fifth on-year to 2.56 million mt (30 million bbl) in total. Sibur will continue to have “exclusive rights to utilize 100% of the LPG transhipment capacity on the pre-agreed terms,” it said when disclosing the planned sale last May.

The addition of a second fractionator at Tobolsk — which brought plant capacity to 6.6 million mt/y (200,000 b/d) — and higher raw NGL availabilities turned 2014 into a bumper year for LPG production: The Tobolsk-registered group’s LPG output — including volumes under processing arrangements — grew 27.8% year-on-year to 5.12 million mt, about 90% (4.60 million mt) of which owned by the producer.

Its petrochemical division absorbed 880,426 mt of LPG, which was one-third more than a year earlier as incremental polymer capacity was ramped up. Deliveries to domestic buyers grew 6.7% on-year at 909,656 mt.

Raw NGL output at the company’s gas processing plants rose 6.6% to 5.15 million mt, against the backdrop of a 6.3% rise in associated petroleum gas (APG) throughput volumes to 20.83 billion cbm. Raw NGLs are obtained when APG — a by-product of oil production — is processed or unstable gas condensate stabilized. Sibur’s equity share in raw NGL output grew more than one-third to 4.82 million mt after it gained full control of additional gas processing assets (see OPIS alert from Feb. 27, 2014). Purchases from third parties were significantly lower as a result.

Fractionation volumes — including processing deals — expanded one-fifth to 6.32 million mt, with Sibur’s share rising one-tenth to 5.79 million mt, yielding LPG and naphtha.

Although the launch of a new pipeline (“Purovsk-Pyt-Yakh-Tobolsk”) gives the Tobolsk complex access to raw NGL feeds from Novatek’s Purovsky processing hub in Russia’s far north, the line’s commercial start toward end-2014 means that the effect was not visible in last year’s purchasing figures yet.