In a seminar organized by the Calotte Academy in Kirkenes, Norway, today, Bjørn Frantzen, the co-author of a new report on Russian oil transport in the Barents Sea, said that Russia now is developing new major oil export capacity several places in the country, among them east-bound pipelines and new and bigger terminals along the Baltic Sea.
In the Barents Sea, the export capacity will be boosted to more than 100 million tons by year 2015, the researcher said.
However, that does not necessarily mean that Russian Arctic oil exports in the years to come will see a boom, Frantzen said.
The new routes will make export capacity bigger than export needs. It will be political considerations, which decide through which route the oil will flow, Mr. Frantzen said.
The report Oil Transport in the Russian part of the Barents Region 2009 shows a gradual increase in Russian oil shipments. Estimated export volumes in 2009 are 15 million tons. Much of that increase is linked with the opening of Lukoil’s Varandey terminal on the eastern Barents Sea coast.
The report is written by Akvaplan-Niva and Bioforsk researchers Aleksey Bambulyak and Bjørn Frantzen for the Norwegian Barents Secretariat.
