United Shipbuilding Corporation has sold the oil terminal located at Shipyard No. 35 to Rosneft for 900 million rubles (€22.8 million), reports Kommersant. The terminal is located in the northern part of Murmansk harbor, close to the location where the Prirlazlomnoye oil-platform was upgraded last year.
During the Cold War, Shipyard No. 35, also called Severmorput, was doing repair of naval vessels including nuclear powered submarines.
The terminal was originally constructed in 2003-2004 for re-loading of oil from rail tank-cars via a pipeline to tankers moored at the pier stretching 280 meters out from shore. A new rail trestle that could take 74 rail tank-cars with oil was also built, according to the report “Oil transport from the Russian part of the Barents Region,” published by Akvaplan-Niva and the Norwegian Barents Secretariat in 2009.
In 2006, the terminal was reoriented from crude to heavy fuel oil. Since 2008 the terminal has not been in use.
Rosneft will almost have to rebuild the entire terminal, or choose to place a permanent tanker to the pipes from shore and use it for ship-to-ship re-loading according to a source Kommersant has interviewed. Another option is to build onshore tanks with a 500.000 tons capacity at the terminal. That will require up to 1,5 billion rubles (€38 million) in investments. Then the terminal could handle up to 3 to 6 million tons soon and in the longer run up to 18 million tons of oil annually.
Most of the oil coming by train to Murmansk for transit to tankers comes from Western Siberia.
Today, the total oil export volume out of all ship-to-ship and rail tank-cars to ship terminals in the Kola bay is around 12 million tons annually.
Rosneft is today the operator of Belokamenka, a huge supertanker anchored between Murmansk and Severomorsk in the Kola bay. The leasing contract Rosneft has with Belokamenka runs out in 2016.
