The expert spoke about the importance of the Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline for a grain deal

“There is no one to replace Russia as the main producer and exporter of ammonia”

Russia is ready to launch the Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline in a matter of days. But Kyiv is actively preventing this, acting solely in its own interests and ignoring the needs of African countries, said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. According to experts, the ammonia pipeline could significantly increase the efficiency of the international grain deal, whose main task is to fully provide the poorest countries with fertilizers and food.

There are no producers on the world market capable of replacing Russia as an exporter of ammonia. The rest either cannot increase output purely physically, or they raise prices, said the head of the NGO Brazzaville Foundation, Jean-Yves Gauthier. In turn, Reuters reported on another demand from Kyiv: Ukraine will agree to the transit of Russian ammonia through its territory if more Ukrainian ports are included in the grain deal and the range of exported goods is expanded. The deal, we recall, was concluded in July 2022 with the participation of Turkey, Ukraine, Russia and with the assistance of the UN. Extended today until July 18, it provides for the export of grain from the ports of Odessa, Chernomorsk and Yuzhny, and involves the removal of restrictions on the export of Russian agricultural products, which has not yet happened.

One of Moscow’s demands is the launch of the Togliatti-Odessa pipeline, through which the transit of ammonia for export was suspended on February 24, 2022 due to the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine. During all subsequent months, the fate of this route was a bargaining chip in the confrontation between Russia and the West and Ukraine. In the context of the grain deal, it is extremely important for a number of reasons. Ammonia (an inorganic chemical compound) is a key component of the chemical industry, used to make both explosives and nitrogen fertilizers. The construction of an ammonia pipeline, designed to connect the production facilities of Togliatti with the port infrastructure of Odessa, began in the 1970s. Established in 1979, Togliattiazot is one of the ten largest ammonia producers in the world, and it has no equal in Russia.

The main task of the ammonia pipeline was to transport products for export through the Odessa port plant in the city of Yuzhny. There, raw materials were loaded into tankers and sent across the Black Sea to buyers. According to data for 2020, it was imported, first of all, by Ukraine (18.9% of the cost of supplies), Estonia (16.1%), Morocco (12%), Turkey (11.6%), India (7.4 %), Bulgaria (7.4%). For Russia, the ammonia pipeline has been and remains the only channel for the export of ammonia, its fate has been repeatedly discussed at negotiations with the participation of representatives of the Russian Federation, the West and Kyiv. The latter offered to launch it in September in exchange for the release of all Ukrainian prisoners of war. “Are people and ammonia the same thing?” – responded the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov. And on November 23, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would work with the UN on the issue of resuming the operation of the ammonia pipeline.

“We are talking about a truly serious problem for the global food market,” says Artem Deev, Head of the Analytical Department at AMarkets. – The fact is that ammonia fertilizers are extremely in demand by the agricultural complex, and there is simply no one to replace Russia as the main producer and exporter of ammonia. No one else is able to give comparable volumes. In Africa, the deficit is so great that the situation is fraught with a humanitarian catastrophe. Given the traditionally weak food security of the region, this circumstance should not be ignored. The Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline, designed to pump about 2.5 million tons of raw materials per year, which is enough to produce 7 million tons of fertilizers, is idle today not for technical, but solely for political reasons.”

Meanwhile, as Politico writes, officials in Europe and the United States support the restart of the ammonia pipeline, given the role of ammonia as a key ingredient in many fertilizers.