Reuters: CPC suspends shipments from Black Sea terminal

The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) has suspended oil shipments from two out of three remote mooring units (TLUs) at the Black Sea terminal in Yuzhnaya Ozereevka, reports Reuters citing two sources.

Shipments are suspended from August 5th and 17th for TLU testing. “CPC has suspended loading from VLU-2 since August 17 due to an inspection, and VLU-1 has been disabled since the beginning of this month for the same reason,” one of the sources said. He clarified that VPU-3 is still working.

CPC’s utilization has so far not been hit hard by lower-than-expected deliveries through CPC due to maintenance work on two of Kazakhstan’s major oil fields, Tengiz and Kashagan, the sources said.

This year, CPC has repeatedly suspended the loading of its TLUs due to repairs and inspections.

As Vedomosti wrote, in early July, the Primorsky District Court of Novorossiysk ruled to suspend the operation of the CPC marine terminal for 30 days to eliminate violations identified by Rostransnadzor. The consortium then explained that it intends to appeal this decision. As a result, on July 11, the Krasnodar Regional Court overturned the decision of the lower court and replaced the suspension of CPC activities with a fine of 200,000 rubles.

CPC is one of the largest investment projects in the energy sector with the participation of foreign capital in the CIS. The main shareholders of CPC are: the state company “Transneft” (manages 24% of the shares, KTK Company – 7%), Kazakhstan (KazMunayGas with a share of 19% and Kazakhstan Pipeline Ventures – 1.75%); the American Chevron (through the Chevron Caspian Pipeline Consortium) owns 15%, the Lukoil structure Lukarco BV – 12.5%. Also among the shareholders are the American Mobil Caspian Pipeline and Rosneft-Shell Caspian Ventures Limited (JV of Rosneft and the Anglo-Dutch Shell) – 7.5% each, BG Overseas Holding Limited and Eni International NANV (2% each), Oryx Caspian Pipeline LLC – 1.75%.