United Shipbuilding Corporation has succeeded in lobbying the possibility of placing orders for the construction of Mistral class helicopter carriers at the Russian shipyards, initially to be purchased in France. The St. Petersburg's shipbuilding company Admiralty Shipyards is actively making bids for the order ".

Due to abnormal heat, drought, the Russian Government has decided to impose a temporary ban on the exports of Russian grain. At the same time, experts fear the domestic producers of grain may incur losses and lose the position they had gained on the global market, which in turn may lead to the curtailment of expansion projects and construction of grain terminals in ports of the country.

David Atkins has been engaged in the oil industry for over 30 years: in the supply business, production and transportation of oil, logistics, refineries capacity planning, freight forwarding, chartering, production and marketing of natural gas. The last and most interesting period in Mr. Atkins’ career was the demurrage and claims department at BP company. Mr. Atkins has told about the demurrage issues in an interview with PortNews.

Vostochny (East) Port, has invested over $15 million in the modernization and replacement of cargo handling equipment. However, the port fails to reach the projected coal volume, mainly because Russian Railways did not confirm the port’s production plans due to technical limitations of road capacity, especially on the road network of the Far Eastern destinations. The coal port’s slowdown entails an increase in payback period for the investment projects, and also reduces the attractiveness of further investments in the development of marine coal terminals.

Container traffic through the seaports of Russia and worldwide is being gradually recovered. In many cases the pre-crisis volume level has already been reached. There is no container shortage at ports yet, but investors continue to implement their port’s projects in hope the containers might be again in high demand very soon.

More and more investors are coming to join the Ust-Luga seaport project. Recently, EuroChem has officially confirmed it would be willing to enter the project. Rosneftebunker’s terminal is expected to be commissioned in Q3, 2010. RTL plans to launch the New Harbor car terminal by late 2010. In late 2011 an oil terminal is projected to start operating for BPS-2. Moreover, there has been an agreement signed for building a grain terminal for United Grain Company. Overall, in the next two years more than 20 billion are expected to pour in the port project.

Russian maritime ports for the first half of 2010 showed good growth dynamics and some figures are approaching pre-crisis levels. Excellent growth rates demonstrate volumes of containers transshipment. Russian terminals are still ahead due to raw goods.

The last 14th Petersburg International Economic Forum has set entirely new points of the country’s economy growth. Askar Jabasov, First Deputy General Director of Belomorsky port LLC, who had participated in the forum believes the decisions voiced at the St. Petersburg conference might affect the future of Russia’s ports industry.

Customs Code of the Customs Union came into force on the territory of Russia and Kazakhstan. Still there is some uncertainty surrounding the ratification of the relevant agreements with Belarus. Despite the entry into force of the new code, many issues remained unresolved.

Seventeen-year negotiations on Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization seems to be stuck again. It is believed to be caused by Russia's crisis management barriers and persistent attempts to create a Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. In addition, the line of Moscow to create a "single economic space" can worsen its relations with its main trading partner - the European Union.