When oil drains off

In the first quarter of 2009, Russian seaports achieved a 4.5-pct increase of total throughput to 110.6 million tonnes with the crude and oil products accounting for the core gain according to the Association of Sea Commercial Ports. In the reported period, transshipment of liquid bulk cargo climbed by 12.8% to 70 million tonnes. However experts admit that oil cargo transshipment may fall throughout the entire year.

Against the low oil prices and decreased oil production the growth of oil cargo transshipment in Russian ports looks impressive indeed. Russia’s oil export climbed by 6.3% to 53.6 million tonnes, transit transshipment – by 18.6% to 11.3 million tonnes owing to crude oil transshipment.

Experts attribute it to the sale of resources accumulated during the past periods. “The forth quarter of the last year saw oil market decline and extremely unfavorable time for oil sale hence certain reserves were accumulated to be then sold in the first quarter of the current year,” Vyacheslav Gunkov, senior analyst of Aton Group told PortNews IAA. 

Dmitri Aleksandrov, analyst of Financial Bridge Asset Management, agrees with him. “Today we see the increase of oil export owing to accumulated reserves,” he told the agency.

At the same time both experts say further increase of crude and oil products transshipment should not be expected. “Oil production level will play a significant role by the end of the current year. However Russia has undertaken certain international obligations – to cut oil production by approximately 3%. Most probably such a decrease will not be undertaken though certain cut is possible,” Dmitri Aleksandrov says. According to his forecast, oil throughput in 2009 is likely to decrease by 0.5%, year-on-year. The same forecast is applicable to oil products, the expert thinks.

Forecast of Vyacheslav Gunkov is somewhat more optimistic. “Most likely, the situation with oil export will stabilize during the year and there will be no violent fluctuations. I expect that the second half of the year will see certain recovery and the demand for crude and oil products will straighten. Besides, there is a possibility that Russia will take advantage of OPEC supply cut and will try to fill this niche with its oil,” the analyst thinks. At the same time he does not rule out negative growth of crude and oil transshipment via Russian seaports in case of unfavorable situation in global economy in 2009.

Anyway, the experts do not expect preservation of such high growth rates when it comes to oil export via Russian seaports. 

Against the growth of liquid bulk throughput, the first quarter demonstrated a considerable fall in transshipment of containerized cargo. Export ofcontainerized cargo fell by 23.5%, import – by 44%.

Egor Govorukhin, Vice-President on commercial work of National Container Company, thinks that “general decrease of throughput in this segment was caused by the economic crisis, negative consequences of which are reflected on Russian importers.” Taking account of the crisis, which is not to cease during 2009, analysts expect further decrease of operations on container transshipment as well as on transshipment of many other cargoes.

Though transshipment of certain cargoes, like grain and ore, demonstrated an impressive growth in the first quarter of the year (7-fold and 3-fold respectively), their volumes in absolute figures are too low (less than 6 million tonnes together) to considerably influence the entire result.

So having in mind experts’ forecasts of zero or even negative growth of crude and oil products transshipment, the forecast of zero growth of total Russian seaports’ throughput in 2009 may look even optimistic.