vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #541 / Business / Reading article...

A new terminal to hold cargo, most of which will be coal, is planned to be built in the Primorye port town of Zarubino, Vostok Media news agency reported.

The terminal’s turnover is expected to reach 60 million tons of cargo per year, and coal is expected to take 32 million tons, Yaroslav Semenikhin, general director of the Far Eastern Research Institute for Marine Transport, said.

The project is being realized by a private business whose name has not been disclosed. According to Semenikhin, his institution is currently performing design works. Construction of the terminal’s first unit may start in 2007, he elaborated.

At the moment, Primorye’s companies are engaged in construction of four large coal terminals, three of them are located in Primorye. One coal terminal is being constructed in the port of Vostochny near Nakhodka. The plans for another two – in the village of Sukhodol and the bay of Troitsa - are undergoing feasibility study. The fourth terminal is being built in the port of Vanino, Khabarovsky region.

Meanwhile the State oil firm Rosneft announced plans to construct a $5 billion refinery at Nakhodka port at the end of the oil pipeline to the Pacific coast, CEO Sergei Bogdanchikov recently said.

"We are studying in particular the construction of a big refinery on the Pacific coast at the end of the Taichet pipeline capable of processing 20 million tons per year in order to serve Asia," Bogdanchikov told France's La Tribune newspaper, international news reports said.

According to Bogdanchikov the refinery would process oil from the Vankor field, which will start production in 2008, coinciding with the construction of the pipeline. The Pacific pipeline is due to run from Taishet in eastern Siberia to northern China and Nakhodka.