KN enhances portfolio of loaded oil products and rendered services
The new park of light oil products of KN, (AB “Klaipėdos nafta“), the operator of oil products and liquefied natural gas terminals, the test operation of which was launched in June, is already creating added value for the company. During the first summer month it accepted several oil products and also raw materials for one of the refineries in the region, which were for the first time imported through Klaipėda oil terminal, KN says in a press release.
Over the last 3.5 years KN has directed almost EUR 45 million of investments into the development of the infrastructure of Klaipėda oil terminal.
Darius Šilenskis, KN Oil Business Director, claims that the need for improvement and infrastructure development was determined by the market itself: “For some time, we have been observing the market changing, the variety of potential cargoes enhancing and clients’ needs growing. These tendencies made us understand that in order to retain the existing clients and to attract new clients in the future, we must be ready not only to reload or accumulate higher amounts of oil products, but also at the same time to accept a wider range of oil products and types of their components for reloading operations. We hope that the implementation of the ongoing investment projects will help us meet all of our clients’ expectations and to further increase our competitive advantage over the neighbouring terminals.”
The previous investments into the infrastructure designed for the changing market have already demonstrated the first results: although the operation of the new KN storage tank park is still being tested, in June it accepted several new oil products.
In June, KN oil terminal for the first time accepted a vessel, which delivered raw materials for one of the refineries in the region. When accepting this cargo, the terminal used a rare loading scheme when a cargo is reloaded from a vessel to railway tankers. Usually, the majority of reloading operations are performed from railway tankers or road transport to vessels.
“We are one of the few multi-modal terminals in the Baltic States, where oil products can be unloaded from all means of transport and reloaded to all means of transport. This flexibility is our huge competitive advantage,” highlights the Oil Business Director of KN.
Usually, the tons reloaded on KN terminals are calculated according to the old loading scheme, i.e. by estimating the amount of the tons of products reloaded from railway tankers and road transport to vessels. According to this scheme, in June, a total of 506 thousand tons of oil products were reloaded in KN Klaipėda and Subačius oil terminals, which is only 1.9% less than last year.
However, if the estimation of the load turnover of June included not only the tons unloaded, but also the tons reloaded to vessels, railway tankers and road transport, the load of June would amount to nearly 600 thousand tons thus exceeding the result of the last year’s June by almost 100 thousand tons.
The result of June shows that, as we have expected, clients are gradually returning back to their planned operational volumes, and the load curve is gradually moving up. However, the Druzhba pipeline contamination incident still has an impact on the activities of our clients. The decision of Orlen Lietuva to direct the major production share by railways to neighbouring countries has also had a negative impact on our load. However, despite these challenges and fierce competitive environment, our oil terminal is the most efficient terminal this year among all oil terminals of the Baltic States, and we are glad about that,” says Darius Šilenskis.
The analysis of the newsletter “Argus Neftetransport” has showed that over the first months of this year KN has used 73.4% of all its loading capacities, when the maximum annual amount it can reload is over 7 million tons. Whereas, Estonian terminal “Liwathon EOS”, which has the highest capacities among the terminals of the Baltic States and which can annually reload 30 million tons of oil, has used only 10% of all its capacities, and Latvian “Ventspils Nafta Terminals” capable to reload annually 20 million tons – 31.6% of its capacities.
KN is the second according to the oil product reload turnover of this year’s first five months among all oil terminals of the three Baltic States. “Ventspils Nafta Terminals” has a minor advantage. Its load exceeds KN’s five months load by about 20%.
