The ban on cargo transshipment at anchorage locations may affect about 10 million tonnes a year of oil product exports in the South Basin, Diana Podolyan, Deputy General Director, Rosewood Shipping, said in an interview with PortNews on the sidelines of ShippingRU 2022 Conference.
The existing onshore port facilities for transshipment of oil products in the South Basin are not enough to handle the entire export traffic, as well as insufficient capacity of direct railway access, while transshipment at anchorage locations allows ship-to-ship transfer of oil products transported by mixed river-sea class tankers.
In October 2021, the State Duma adopted in the first reading a bill on imposing a ban on offshore transshipment of dangerous goods. At the same time, the deputies of the Nizhny Novgorod Region’s Legislative Assembly proposed to include Port Kavkaz in the list of seaports formed by the Russian government that will have permission to conduct within its harbours ship-to-ship cargo transfer. Besides, the State Duma approved in the first reading a bill on fines for violations of the cargo transshipment rules.