PRESS: Security Council against Pechenga port in Murmansk Region

MOSCOW, Jun 4 (PRIME) -- Russia’s Security Council did not support a 113.6 billion ruble construction of the deep-sea Pechenga port in the Murmansk Region with a projected cargo capacity of 34 million tonnes a year, Kommersant business daily reported on Tuesday.

Mikhail Shmakov, chairman of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia, asked President Vladimir Putin to support the project, but the council’s Secretary Nikolai Patrushev said in a letter to Putin that the Transport, Energy, Economic Development ministries and Russian Railways deemed the project unreasonable.

The government documents on strategic planning do not encompass the project. The project has only been worked out as a concept, it has no feasibility study, or an estimate of necessary budget investment. Largest Russian companies that operate in the Arctic zone – Novatek, Rosneft, Gazprom Neft, and Gazprom – expressed no interest in the project. It will also restrict operations of the Northern Fleet in the region, Patrushev said.

However, Shmakov told Vedomosti that the resolution is a “private opinion,” and that the project is still developed.

The government wanted to build the Pechenga port in the 1990s, in 2007, and in 2012, but it only ended in a declaration of intent at the time.

(65.5547 rubles – U.S. $1)

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