Murmansk transportation node

The appointment of Marina Kovtun as new Governor of the Murmansk region could give impetus to the development of Murmansk Transportation Node project, which has been substantially modified.

Coal as a major commodity

Sea Commercial Port Lavna Ltd is set to commence implementation of the project of a coal terminal and rail track from the station to the terminal of Lavna, the company said. An investment agreement is currently under discussion of the investor with the state through Rostransmodernizatsiya, which is a customer-developer of the project of integrated development of Murmansk transportation node, a priority investment project of the North-West Federal District.

Initially, the Murmansk transportation node was projected to handle the commodities such as coal, crude oil, petroleum products and containers, at total volume of 28 million tons a year, including some 18 mln tons of coal, 10 mln tons of crude and oil products, an informed source told PortNews.

To handle the loads the project included the construction of a coal and liquid bulk terminals. Experts doubt the MTN would be able to attract enough volume of containers since the Baltic Sea has had large container facilities in the Baltic Basin.

The oil terminal based on the west coast of the Kola Bay, most likely, will be receiving the cargo by sea and transship it to larger tankers. In particular, it may become an alternative to FSO "Belokamenka."

However, if we talk about crude oil, its exports stagnated and in some cases reduced due to the oil reserves depletion. For example, the volume of crude oil shipments through the northern terminal Varandey shrank by 2.3 times to 556,400 tons.

The new coal terminal Lavna investors are major Russian coal companies Kuzbassrazrezugol and Siberian Business Union. They are creating a coal port on the western shore of the Kola Bay with capacity of 18 million tons a year. According to experts, the "coal" potential of MTH is a lot more than the projected throughput, since the coal traffic now passing through the Baltic states’ ports can someday be shifted to the Murmansk facilities.

According to forecasts, Russia's coal exports by sea will rise by 5% per year, and capacity of the seaports of the country – only by 3.3% a year, that is, there are prerequisites for the development of appropriate port infrastructure. Russia currently supply to Japan 9.1% of its coal exports, 8.4% - to China and 5% - to Korea, and the rest of the commodity volumes are exported to Europe and the CIS countries.

Vitaly Chernov