“We do not believe that launch is possible in 2010”, one trading source said.

Another Ust-Luga’s port contractor Transneft said the timing of the construction of its Ust-Luga Bunker Complex will depend on coordinating work with neighboring terminals being built by Gunvor and natural gas producer Novatek.

Industry sources and traders say the launch of the Ust Luga terminal will affect other export routes and cargoes via Russia’s key Baltic Sea oil terminals of Vysotsk, Petersburg and Primorsk.
Gunvor has said annual capacity at Ust Luga will reach 25 million tonnes of refinery products, making it Russia’s largest oil product terminal in the Baltics and taking about one-fifth of Russia’s total oil product exports.
Last year Russia’s deputy prime minister Sergei Ivanov said exports of Russian fuel oil by rail through the Baltics would “stop completely within a year”. He said the new fuel terminal at the Russian port of Ust-Luga would replace the Estonian transshipment route.

Meanwhile, Port of Tallinn shipped 2.349 million tonnes of oil products in August, most of it Russian fuel oil. Volumes were up 21% from the same month last year and up almost 4% month-on-month.

Oil transhipments through Tallinn that has traditionally been the main transit route for exports of Russian oil product have remained robust, despite Russian moves to find alternative routes.