Baltic States – CIS, Energy, EU – Baltic States, Forum, Gas, Port, Transport

The delegates were welcomed by traditional greeting of Mr. Andrew Rudenko, General Director of Confidence Capital:

"As a result of considerable efforts aimed for development of port infrastructure in North-West region, the Russian Federation has become not only the leading source and exporter of energy, but also a leading operator of export capacity in the region and a leader in the eastern Baltic. That is why our company created and successfully held in St. Petersburg in 2011 event specifically dedicated to this topic — Baltic Oil and Gas Trading and Transportation Conference. The success of this event led to organization of the second conference on this subject", said Mr. Rudenko.

In the first session, focused on the prospects for the development of export and trade flows with the influence of the regulatory framework of Customs Union and the WTO and the latest trends in demand for hydrocarbons in Europe, the following experts participated:

·                     Mr. Kirill Kotin, Marketing Manager of Petersburg Oil Terminal;

·                     Mr. Nikolay Novikov, Deputy Director of the Department of State Policy in the field of technical regulation, the Ministry of Industry and Trade;

·                     Mr. Romans Baumanis, Regional Advisor for the Baltic region of Nord Stream;

·                     Mr. Danil Vinnitsa, Director of Eurasian Research Center for Comparative and International Financial Law;

·                     Mr. Vladimir Talanov, expert of practice of international trade and customs law at "Egorov, Puginsky, Afanasiev & Partners";

Vladimir Talanov shared in his speech the impact of Russia's accession to the WTO, commented on the main changes and made recommendations:

"Entry to the WTO is like a game of chess — the winner is the one who watches the game carefully and thoughts out the strategy. Businesses is provided with a set of tools that it needs to learn to use", summed up his speech Mr. Talanov.

Kirill Kotin acquainted participants with the tendencies of redistribution of oil export freight traffic, logistics of supply and structure of refining in the Russian Federation. According to him, to date, on Baltic coast the structure of facilities for handling petroleum products for export has formed. The main terminals for transshipment of oil products in the North-West of Russia will be the terminals of Ust-Luga, Primorsk, Vysotsk and St. Petersburg, and after reaching full production capacity the largest terminals in the region will be terminals in Ust-Luga and Primorsk. The existing surplus of facilities for transshipment of oil has significantly increased competition among oil product terminals in the Baltic region, which will be growing due to entry of Russia to the WTO. In general, the spare capacity will remain at the terminals, not connected to vertically integrated companies and large trading companies.

Nikolay Novikov in his speech informed the delegates about the changes in the area of ​​technical regulations and spoke about the technical and organizational aspects of metrological support by GIS Neftekontrol.

"The purpose of implementation of the system — to get a transparent system of oil control, in order to create a market-based mechanisms to streamline the oil products market, to remove from the market of unscrupulous manufacturers and suppliers of oil sources, reduce illegal circulation, improve efficiency, and the revenue side of the budget", — said Mr. Novikov.

D.Vinnitsky reported on international taxation of cross-border energy supply through the connected network.

Romans Baumanis spoke about projects of "Nord Stream" to build the supply of gas to Europe.

During the first session a panel discussion was organized on the topic of "Strategies and prospects for the Baltic Sea Region". Among the main participants were Mr. Gleb Gorodyankin, Analyst of Reuters news agency, Danil Vinnitsa, Director of Eurasian Research Center for Comparative and International Financial Law and Vladimir Kurka, the head of the project of creating an industrial zone, Company Ust-Luga.

Speech of V.Kurka attracted special interest of attendees. Answering the questions from the audience, a company spokesman talked about the project "Integrated Development of Marine Port Ust-Luga and the surrounding area." The company plans to set up five clusters: transport and logistics, industrial, agro-industrial, tourism and recreation, city-cluster. According to V.Kurkia certain infrastructure has already been established, and the company is ready to work towards attracting investors.

In the second session, the prospects of oil refining and detailed overview of the petroleum products market in Russia, NW Europe, Belarus were introduced by the speakers of the Belarusian Oil Company (Dmitry Yudin), Reuters (Gleb Gorodyankin) ESP — Consulting (Anastasia Pervushkina), Platts (Dinar Bagautdinov ) and others.

Dmitry Yudin outlined the prospects of exports of oil products to the Baltic States and Europe from Belarus, described the structure of the Belarusian oil products market, the key export destinations of CJSC Belarusian Oil Company and plans for further activities development.

Gleb Gorodyankin introduced peculiarities of pricing and distribution of the flows of Russian export oil to the Baltic. In the final part of his report, Mr. Gorodyankin noted that it is not necessary to wait for additional volume of Urals on the market, as there is only probability of its flows’ redistribution. The government will continue its policy of regulation in Urals supply on European markets through tariff and non-tariff measures.

Dinar Bagautdinov presented results of analysis of the oil market in the North West Europe and gave expert forecast on how the market will develop and what will be the demand.

Anastasia Pervushkina shared in her report "Perspectives of deepening Russian oil refining" about the causes of low level of depth of refining in Russia, and substantiated economic feasibility of deeper refining.

A special focus of the conference was devoted to the development of regional transport infrastructure and transshipment facilities in the region, the problems of competition and terminals occupancy. The following experts took part in this sessions:

• Alexander Kochukov, Deputy General Director for Business Development of CFTO, Russian Railways;
• Oleg Glukhov, Deputy Captain of the Big Port of St. Petersburg for branches;
• Vyacheslav Guy, Assistant of General Director for maritime safety and oil spills of Primorsk Port;
• Vitaly Chernov, Editor of information-analytical agency PortNews.

The conference covered a wide range of practical issues of trade and transportation, especially pricing, rates and tariffs, aspects of exchange and arbitrage trading, market prospects of oil and petroleum products in the framework of the Customs Union. Their expertise on these topics was shared by:
• Vsevolod Sokolov, Director of the North-West region S-PIMEX;
• Gennady Vinogradov, Head of GR and TK No.2 of North-West Energy Customs Office of Central Energy Customs of FCS of Russia;
• Richard Watts, Director of HR Maritime;
• Natalia Yasenovets, Technical Manager of laboratories of oil and oil products departments at SGS.

Among participants of the Baltic Oil and Gas Trading and Transportation Conference this year there were representatives of such companies as: Lukoil Baltic, Gazprom Neft, Gazprom Neft-MOGC, Russian Railways, the port of Primorsk, company Ust-Luga, Petersburg Oil Terminal, Big Port of Saint-Petersburg, Woodson Terminal , Belarusian Oil Company, KazTransOil, Eurotrans, Parallel-M, Litasko, Koltech International, Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port, Petrotrans-Primorsk, Aktobe Refining, Transport & Services, ORLEN Lietuva, Luna Group, Vesta Terminal, Balt Nafta, Lia Oil, Sandmark and many others.

The delegates of the 2^nd Baltic Oil and Gas Trading and Transportation Conference agreed that there is need in this conference to be organized on a regular basis, as this is the only regional event that provides a detailed peer review and analysis of current situation and perspectives of the markets, which generate Baltic transit and are served by Baltic transit.

The 3^rd Baltic Oil and Gas Trading and Transportation Conference is scheduled for October 2013.

The organizing committee would like to thank media partners for support of the conference:

Information-analytical agency Port-News — the official online partner of the Baltic Oil and Gas Trading and Transportation Conference.

Information Center Cortez, RZD-Partner magazine, the publication Territoriya Neftegaz, Platts, Neftegaz.Ru, online magazine The Baltic Course, information resource TEK Oilcapital, publication Transportweekly, Nefterynok journal, magazine Gas Vertical, trade platform NGE.RU, magazine Tamozennye Novosti, magazine Toplivny rynok, ARM "GIS-Profi", trade portal Fabrikant.ru, Maritime Bureau "NT", "Vesti Mosrkogo Peterburga", online community portal of TEK Energyland.info, Gazportal.ru, “Energetika i Promyshellnost Rossii”, Neftyaniki.rf, Logistics magazine, the international media group Caspian Energy, Agency RusEnergy.