The European diesel market is finding unexpected support from disruption in the refining sector from the shutdown of Russia’s Druzhba pipeline due to contaminated oil and after a Russian refinery went bust. Diesel refining margins, a measure of the profitability of making diesel from crude, hit a six-week high of nearly $15 a barrel on Thursday and were trading close to this level on Friday. Oil in the 1 million barrel per day (bpd) Druzhba pipeline running from Russia to eas

Goods volumes across the Russian Arctic were up almost 25 percent in 2018, information from the Russian Transport Ministry shows. A total of 92,7 million tons was handled by regional seaports, of which almost 70 percent was oil products and liquified natural gas. The by far biggest growth is found in Sabetta, the port handling liquified natural gas produced by Novatek in the grand Yamal LNG project. The port located on the northeastern tip of Yamal Peninsula in 2018 handled a

Russian President Vladimir Putin has put into operation Kaliningrad’s LNG regasification terminal on January 8, which is Russia’s first floating storage regasification unit (FSRU). The terminal, built in the Baltic Sea, has the capacity of 2.7 billion cbm per year and consists of a pier protected by a breakwater and the Marshal Vasilevsky LNG tanker. The project was carried out by Russian energy giant Gazprom. The breakwater and the terminal are located 5 kilometres from the

A Maersk vessel loaded with Russian fish and South Korean electronics will next week become the first container ship to navigate an Arctic sea route that Russia hopes will become a new shipping highway. The Arctic voyage by the 3,600 20-foot container capacity Venta Maersk is the latest step in the expansion of the so-called Northern Sea Route which is becoming more accessible to ships as climate change reduces the amount of sea ice. The brand new Venta Maersk, one of the wor

When Saudi Arabia’s oil minister attended Friday’s grand opening of a giant liquefied natural gas plant in northern Siberia, he’d have known this was just part of a bigger energy story developing in Russia’s icy north. It’s not just gas that’s a big deal there. Russia’s Arctic oil flows are soaring too.These are not the putative offshore fields that energy supremo Igor Sechin touted five years ago as Russian oil’s future. Arctic exploration has been all but halted by cheap oi

U.S.-based commodities funds posted the largest withdrawals of 2017, bleeding $1.2 billion during the latest week and sending a contrarian signal to rising oil and gold markets, Investment Company Institute (ICI) data showed. Crude oil futures and gold have both generated more than 4 percent returns apiece over the last month, but withdrawals accelerated for U.S. funds heavily invested in those assets. Kristina Hooper, global market strategist at Invesco Ltd, said the selling

Ever wondered how monster trucks are transported from one place to another? Well, it takes another type of a monster. Thirteen enormous haulage trucks were recently shipped on a heavy lift vessel owned by Singapore-based multipurpose operator AAL Shipping from Laem Chabang Port in Thailand to the Port of Nakhodka in southeast Russia. Intended for Siberian mining project, these truck units – each over fourteen meters in length, weighing 170 million tons – were transported on t

Members of OPEC are scheduled to meet with Russia in Algiers on Wednesday to once again discuss a coordinated effort to stabilize the oil market. That meeting marks OPEC’s third attempt this year to discuss stabilizing actions, which thus far have ended in failure. Because of those past failed attempts, the market does not expect any action next week. In fact, just two of the 23 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expect any agreement. However, while the market is discounting any

The Russian Direct Investment Fund, established on the government's initiative for investing in large infrastructure projects in the country, made an unusual investment in June. The foundation, along with international venture companies Sherpa Ventures, Formation8 and ZhenFun, invested in the Hyperloop One project. The new technology, created with the participation of Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and Tesla, promises to transport passengers and cargo at a speed of up to 745 mp