ANATOLY GORDIYENKO, Chief Engineer, Port Maritime Administration Chief Engineer, Port Maritime Administration

Let me remind you that port maritime administrations (MAs) were introduced in Russia in 1994 as unitary companies, that is, state bodies acting as port authorities. The St. Petersburg MA was set up as an authority providing safe and year-round navigation in the Gulf of Finland and the Neva river. This difficult work in-volves constantly dredging sea and approach canals and fairways in order to keep their depth at the necessary level. In progress are works to dredge the bottom of the city's sea canal to 13.5 metres compared to the existing 11.5 metres, and extend it to 140 metres from its current length of 100 metres. 550-600 thousand cubic meters of soil is removed annually from the bottom. Thus, we will achieve new canal dimensions by 2000. This will permit us to receive larger ships.

A significant step forward has been taken in equipping the port with radio naviga-tion facilities making it possible for ships to pass the section from the entrance buoy behind the town of Kronshtadt and back. In this year the old radio locator stations in Strelna and Stary Peterhoff have been replaced by modern ones. In Batareynaya Bay, equipment and antennas for global sea emergency connection are being introduced..

Peculiar to our port is the necessity to use icebreakers to ensure navigation in winter. Naturally, this makes the work of port services more difficult, requires powerful technical capacities and specially-trained experts.

The main thing is to take full advantage of the opportunities given to us by the port's location in St. Petersburg and in the north-western industrial region's link-age to the rest of Russia via convenient and advanced communications. In fact, our port is a wide sea gateway between East and West, the largest and most op-portune international trade transit point of its kind. What is being done to recon-struct the Neva harbor and make it more attractive in the near future?

A 600 metre-long terminal

"New East" has already reported about Russia's largest, 660-metre wide, con-tainer terminal built in our port at the 101th moorage. It is designed for the annual processing of over 150,000 containers. In October 1997, the final 450-metre section of the terminal under construction was completed. Now the 660-metre moorage front is ready to receive container transports and Ro-Ro ships where works are already being performed and will be completely deployed after pur-chasing foreign reloading machines and cranes. Tens of millions of dollars are re-quired and we, together with the St. Petersburg Sea Port Corporation, must raise these moneys. Being the most advanced, the terminal must work like a Swiss clock, without delaying the flow of cargo for a single minute.

Let me remind you that another container terminal at the 88th moorage is to be completely reconstructed with an increased capacity of 50 per cent. Therefore, the St. Petersburg sea port will possess one of the most advanced and capacious terminal tandems in the Baltic region.

The 28-30th and 68-70th moorages will also be transformed. In all likelihood, they will be resurrected and become universal terminals for general cargo proc-essing. Furthermore, a new oil and petroleum transit complex with projected ca-pacity of 5 million tons is under construction. Several years ago a pipeline con-nected the Kirishi plant with the oil terminal, railroads and motorways were built, and a full infrastructure was created to provide permanent work for the terminal. While new ports in Leningrad Region will be under construction, ours will in-crease its capacity each year.

Clear Objectives

The St. Petersburg Port’s role is: to receive and efficiently process the most finan-cially advantageous freight, including general cargoes, containers, refrigerators, equipment and heavy cargo. It is reasonable to move environmentally-hazardous cargo traffic, as well as mechanically-loaded cargo, outside the city and to con-centrate these at distant cargo processing complexes, such as the coal terminal in Ust-Luga. Such a sub-division by zones is provided for by the scheme for the fu-ture St. Petersburg Greater Sea Port which has a detailed development plan for transport and technological complexes located inside the city. This layout was re-cently considered and approved by the municipal government. The MA and the Corporation want to provide each shipowner or consignor arriving in our port with the opportunity to use the entire range of storage and expediting services, customs clearance and cargo dispatching by means of the transport of their choice. As a result of all of this, the Neva harbor will become significantly more attractive.

According to forecasts by international experts, increased freight turnover in our port will definitely reach 20 million tons a year. This is the target for the near future; it is being implemented by the MA. A more long-term objective – 60 million tons annual freight turnover – is to be achieved by the Greater Sea Port.

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