Emsis appeals to U.S. senators for some 'crude' help

  • 2004-08-26
  • Staff and wire reports
RIGA - Prime Minister Indulis Emsis last week appealed to a visiting delegation of U.S. congressmen to help the Baltic country renew pipeline-bound oil supplies to the port of Ventspils.

"If bilateral negotiations with Russia are failing, then maybe if a third party gets involved it may go better," said the prime minister.
Specifically, Emsis hinted that it would be good to see U.S. shareholders in the terminal help renew supplies, an idea that has been floated in the past as well.
Currently there are no major foreign investors in the oil terminal, which hasn't received crude via pipeline since December 2002, though several foreign companies, including one from the United States, have expressed interest in strategic cooperation with the terminal.
Ventspils Nafta officials have in recent weeks activated a public relations campaign to woo Russian investors into buying a controlling stake in the terminal. Only with Russian involvement, they claim, can the company, which is currently in the red, undergo a turnaround.
Russia has made up for the loss of Ventspils by increasing export capacity of its Primorsk terminal, where throughput has soared over 200 percent to become the second largest port in the region after St. Petersburg.
Emsis said that a decision on the privatization of state-owned Ventspils Nafta shares has already been made, and that the possibility remained open. Currently the state owns some 38 percent of Ventspils Nafta, while a group of shareholders related to management, it is believed, controls approximately 52 percent.
Ventspils Nafta announced last week that first-half turnover increased to 27 million lats (40.3 million euros), while profits reached 1.3 million lats, according to a report submitted to the Riga Stock Exchange.
Interestingly, the report shows that the firm's profits grew not on its core business - oil handling - but on dividends received from subsidiary companies.
Participation in subsidiaries and associated companies brought the concern 1.2 million lats in net profits.
In the past year Ventspils Nafta has become a multisector concern, managing investments in a number of subsidiaries from oil transit, to media and hotel management, to real estate. Its core activity remains oil transit - via the Ventspils Naftas Terminalis terminal and the LatRosTrans oil pipeline operator.
The Ventspils Nafta concern posted losses of 9.4 million lats for 2003 on a consolidated turnover of 55.4 million lats.