OREANDA-NEWS. December 01, 2010. Russian crude oil export volumes through the Black Sea are likely to decline in the next five years as Transneft adds pipelines, according to TNK-BP.

The East Siberian Pacific Ocean, ESPO, link to the Asia/Pacific, will draw a larger portion of Russia’s crude exports eastwards, said Jonathan Kollek, TNK-BP’s vice president for sales, trading and logistics.

“The Black Sea, in my opinion, lost its attractiveness in comparison to other destinations” as it’s less profitable than the Druzhba pipe to Europe and links to Baltic ports, Kollek told reporters today in Moscow. “It is the inferior one.”

Transneft, the state pipeline operator, may have as many as 113 million tons of spare capacity in its system after it completes construction of ESPO and the Baltic Pipeline System-2, BTS-2, by 2015, TNK-BP estimates.

The quality of crude being transported west is also likely to decline as the eastern route takes better quality crude, Kollek said.

“The issue of crude quality is not limited to the east,” Kollek said, since the ESPO blend should improve in quality of API and sulfur content next year.

Urals export blend quality to the west will be depressed as volumes that had improved the blend go east instead and Tatneft’s Taneco Refinery project has yet to refine high sulfur crudes, he said.