Precious cargo bottlenecked

Frozen ports have prompted Russia to temporarily suspend wheat shipments to Estonia, causing tons of wheat and oil to get backed up along the country's railroads.

As ice conditions at the ports have not changed, Estonian Railways has asked the Russian Transportation Ministry to prolong the shipment suspension to March 20, to which the ministry agreed.

Meanwhile, the Port of Tallinn is scrambling to figure out what to do with the million of tons of wheat already stored at the port.

According to Estonian Rail-ways, the main reason for the wheat transit jam is the absence of a powerful ice breaker that would provide for the timely mooring of cargo vessels.

As of March 10, Estonian Railways had 36 separate trains waiting to be unloaded, 13 of which were carrying wheat.

Margus Varav, an Estonian Railways spokesman, said the Port of Tallinn's wheat storage terminals were full thanks to record harvests in Russia and Kazakhstan that has led to major transit traffic through Latvia and Estonia, where an unusually cold winter has iced over ports.

Estonian Railways' costs for managing the trains, many of which stand idle, amount to millions of kroons, according to Varav.

Russia said that only about a fourth of the wheat that arrives every day is unloaded.

In addition, customs and border at the Ivangorod-Narva and Pechora Pskovskie-Orava checkpoints cannot keep up with the transit volume, according to the Russian ministry.

In February 2003, the two stations served about 85 percent of the 1,764 trains and that caused jams on the Oktyabrskaya Railway in Russia and eventually forced the ministry to suspend some transit to Estonia.

Estonia officials denied the allegations, saying they are well-equipped to handle transit flow from Russia and blaming the logjam on the weather.

EOS Ltd., an Estonian oil transit company handling about 15 percent of the crude oil coming from the CIS countries through Estonia, was also influence by cold weather and increased Russian deliveries.

"Our terminal and our partners had to adapt to the cold weather. The speed of loading was reduced by the frost," said Arnout Lugtmeijer, CEO of EOS Ltd.

The temperature of naphtha, a petroleum product, delivered from Russia in tank-cars fell to 8 degrees Celsius in February. The normal temperature of handling the product is 20 degrees.

"Warming it was a long procedure," he said.

Another reason for slower work, according to Lugtmeijer, was the increase of the average number of wagons in trains coming from Russia.

Lugtmeijer added he hopes EOS will increase the speed of product handling next year thanks to a 230 million kroon renovation of its terminal.