On August 14 the Turkish tanker Kazan shipped 3,080 tonnes of Euro 4 standard RON-95 gasoline to Zaporizzhya, located roughly halfway down the Dnipro river. This was the second successful delivery of Romanian-produced gasoline unloaded at the Zirka terminal in Zaporizzhya following on from a July 29 delivery which saw 2,915 tonnes of RON-95 gasoline unloaded.
These river shipments, the first of their kind in eight years, were supplied by Rompetrol and delivered via tankers chartered from the Romania Black Sea port of Constanta.
Previously Rompetrol had been offloading its tankers at marine terminals in Odessa and Feodosia (Crimea) for further shipments of motor fuels by rail to mainland Ukraine.
These shipments into the country’s very heartlands should now enable the Romanian supplier to significantly improve the economics of delivery.
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The tanker crew involved in this recent August delivery noted that the next shipments will likely bring 100-200 tonnes more, as the higher tanker load attempted during the second shipment on the renewed route enabled the vessel to pass both “faster and easier” under the river’s major obstacle, a rail bridge near Kherson. Another tanker cargo carrying Rompetrol’s diesel fuel is expected in early September, trading sources report.
Meanwhile, the economics of shipments along the river have been bolstered by oil product exports from Ukraine. After supplying Romanian-produced petrol to Zaporizzhya in late July, the tanker Kazan returned to Romania with a load of Euro-4 standard diesel fuel from Lisichansk refinery (TNK-BP). To capitalise on the opportunities this presents, Ukrainian traders are now organising a cargo of TS-1 jet fuel, sources close to Zaporizzhya’s tank farm said on condition of anonymity.
The Nizhnedneprovskaya tank farm (80 kilometres upstream from the Zaporizzhya port terminal) is also gearing up to start accepting motor fuel river shipments, trading sources in the region say. Romanian gasoline is experiencing growing demand in the region and Kazan’s first and second shipments were contracted out long before the tanker had berthed in Zaporizzhya.
Ukraine’s state energy reserves regulatory body, Derzhkomreserv, has allocated Zirka a 37,000 cubic-metre tank farm capacity plus 65,000 cubic-metre capacity for diesel fuel, company director Anatoly Ovsievsky states. In other words, Derzhkomreserv has effectively given its approval for Zirka tank farm to be stocked to full capacity with imported fuel. Zirka is also initiating supplies of gas condensate from Samara region of Russia.
This latest development is part of a market trend that has seen private initiative become a growing factor in the activities of the state agency assigned to stabilise the motor fuels market, and traders have credited it with enabling Derzhkomreserv to function much more efficiently as a result.
Consumers cheer, refineries moan
Back in 2005 the Ukrainian government was forced to liberalise motor fuel imports, opening the country’s domestic market up to direct competition from the more advanced refineries of neighbouring Belarus, Lithuania, Romania and Russia.
Despite numerous complaints from Ukraine’s refineries, that claimed that this increased competition from gasoline and diesel imports forced them to sell at cheaper rates within Ukraine than comparative prices in Russia and Belarus, the country’s car owners benefited significantly from the reduction in prices and the start of river imports looks set to continue this consumer-friendly trend.
The move to reignite the river traffic is not particularly positive news for the Russian and British owners of Ukraine’s Odessa, Kremenchug and Lisichansk refineries (Lukoil, UkrTatNafta and TNK-BP respectively), but unsurprisingly car drivers have welcomed the arrival of affordable quality gasoline from EU member Romania.
