The 3,000th tanker has been loaded at the Marine Terminal of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium in Novorossiysk since the start of operations. The tanker, CE-NIRIIS with a deadweight of 106,504 tons (owned by Marine Trust LTD, Greece) completed loading at 5:15 pm local time on June 26.
CPC Terminal loaded its first tanker on October 13, 2001. In total, since the start of operations, the Tengiz-Novorossiysk pipeline loaded out over 322 million tons of Kazakh and Russian crude for exports, including 30.6 million tons last year. In all this time the Marine Terminal has not had a single accident. Due to application of modern technologies and equipment and also stable performance the Marine Terminal has received three international Oil Terminal Awards in the nominations “Best Technological Equipment”, “Reliable Partner” and “2012 Sustainability.
The terminal loads tankers using two single point moorings (SPM) which allow to load crude the most environmentally-clean way away from the shore, including poor weather conditions. A third SPM was installed as part of the CPC Expansion Project last year with an improved design: a multistage leak prevention allows to load heavy-tonnage vessels to be loaded and mitigate the accident risk at sea. The additional SPM will allow to increase the volume of crude loaded during the time when one of the single point moorings is taken out for preventive maintenance every year.
CPC Pipeline System is one of the major investment energy projects with foreign participation in the CIS. The pipeline that transports crude oil from the oil fields of Western Kazakhstan to the Marine Terminal in Novorossiysk is 1,511 km long.
The Expansion Project envisages rehabilitation of 5 existing and construction of 10 additional pump stations (2 in the Republic of Kazakhstan and 8 in the Russian Federation), six near Novorossiysk and an SPM at the CPC Marine Terminal to supplement 4 existing crude oil storage tanks. It also includes replacement of a 88 km pipeline section in Kazakhstan with a larger diameter pipe. Total investment in the Project will be US$ 5.4 billion.
CPC Shareholders: Russian Federation (represented by Transneft - 24% and CPC Company - 7%) - 31%; Republic of Kazakhstan (represented by KazMunaiGas - 19% and Kazakhstan Pipeline Ventures LLC - 1.75%) - 20.75%; Chevron Caspian Pipeline Consortium Company - 15%, LUKARCO B.V. - 12.5%, Mobil Caspian Pipeline Company - 7.5%, Rosneft-Shell Caspian Ventures Limited - 7.5%, BG Overseas Holding Limited - 2%, Eni International N.A. N.V. - 2% and Oryx Caspian Pipeline LLC - 1.75%.