Rosneft redistributes supplies of oil products from Samara group of refineries

Rosneft redistributes supplies of its Samara group of refineries from the north to the south of Russia and is going to transport 15 million tons of oil products via the Volga- Don Canal for three years, the Kommersant writes.

The river route will be 10% cheaper for Rosneft than railway, but the workload of the channel may cause problems to other shippers. Carriers exploring the conditions of the proposed contract with caution.

The initial cost of the transportation will make up 25.7 billion rubles ($758.81 million).  Samara, Saratov, Syzran and Kashpir were named as loading port and delivery point will be storage tankers near ports of Kavkaz (the Kerch Strait) and Kerch.

In December, Rosneft tried to find a carrier that would transport 17 million tons of oil products over the same period in the same direction, but concluded contracts only for 10 % of this volume with Kontur of St. Petersburg (a part pf the Baltic Oil Company) and Volgotrans of Samara. Traditionally, black oil of the Rosneft’s Samara group of refineries (Kuibyshev, Novokuibyshev and Syzran refineries with total capacity of 16.5 million tons of oil per year) is supplied by river.