Feb 13, 2008: Ust-Luga Port Sees Boost

Bloomberg

Russia’s Ust-Luga port, the country’s fastest-growing Baltic terminal, almost doubled cargo handling last year to more than 7 million tons after President Vladimir Putin hailed the importance of the facility during a 2006 visit.

The port is constructing a new ferry complex and last year laid 7 kilometers of railroad tracks and made other infrastructure upgrades, the Leningrad regional government said Monday in an e-mailed statement.

Russia’s Transport Ministry said earlier this month that 3.3 billion rubles ($133 million) will be spent this year on modernizing Ust-Luga, more than a third of government spending on developing ports in 2008. Russia has sought to recover cargo capacity on the Baltic lost after the Soviet Union’s collapse.

“The Ust-Luga port became a priority for the regional government after the support shown at the federal level,’’ Nadezhda Malysheva, a spokeswoman for St. Petersburg’s transport committee, said in a phone interview.

Primorsk, Russia’s biggest crude oil port, shipped 74.2 million tons of oil last year, 12 percent more than in 2006, and remained the region’s busiest terminal in terms of total cargo, the government said in the statement.