Russia and China to build oil transhipment complex for US$686 million

MOSCOW: Russia’s United Oil and Gas-Chemical (ONGK) and China’s Xuan Yuan Industrial Development have agreed to jointly invest 5 billion yuan (US$686 million) in the construction of a transhipment oil complex in Russia’s far east, the Roscongress fund said on Monday (Sep 18).

The complex will facilitate Russia’s oil exports to China as Moscow expands its infrastructure to diversify exports of commodities eastward and away from Europe, which it now deems politically “unfriendly”.

The deal to finance the project was signed last week in the far-eastern Russian city of Vladivostok at an economic forum organised by Roscongress.

It said the funds will be raised at Russian and Chinese financial institutions.

The transborder complex will be set up in Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Region near a railway bridge across the Amur River linking the Russian town of Nizhneleninskoye to China’s Tongjiang.

Roscongress said there will be five large infrastructure units, including a terminal with a capacity to store, blend and load up to 5.8 million metric tonnes per year of crude oil and oil and gas condensate mixtures.

The plans also foresee the construction of a depot with vertical and horizontal tanks for receiving, storing and dispensing up to 1 million tons a year of petroleum products and fuel oil.

There will also be a gas-filling complex for transhipment of liquefied petroleum gas, which would be able to handle up to 650,000 tons of product annually.