OREANDA-NEWS. April 28, 2012. The profit of “Ventspils nafta” (NASDAQ OMX RIGA: VNF1R) Group’s subsidiary “Ventspils nafta terminals” (VNT) last year was 8.5 million lats, and it will be invested into the company’s development. It is planned that in 2012 the company will invest 6 million lats into its fixed assets, and a half-million will be channelled to environment sanitary measures – to improve conditions due to historical pollution (decontaminate soil and groundwater from pollution of petroleum products that was caused during soviet years).

Revenue of VNT was 58.8 million lats in 2011, which is considerably more than in 2010 when the company’s income was 43.4 million lats. The increase is attributable to increase in proportion of railway traffic – VNT covers railway transportation costs of its customers which in turn is then recovered in full.

 “The past year has been successful for Ventspils nafta terminals. Despite the fact that the global economy has not really recovered from the crisis yet, it has not affected our transhipment volumes, as they have even increased  by 26%. This year we are planning to carry out a number of investment projects. It is planned that we will launch completely new and very modern pumping stations this year, and that will enable to accommodate product flows better. Those investments will be in line with latest trends with respect to safety, technology, and energy efficiency”, explains the General Director of VNT Lars Pantzlaff.

In 2011 also transhipment volumes of petroleum products have increased by 26%, reaching 11.37 million tons. 5.7 million tons of the company’s transhipment volumes were delivered by railway and by sea, but 5.6 million tons – via the petroleum product pipeline owned by LatRosTrans. Diesel fuel contributed to the largest portion of the transhipment volumes – about 85%.

In the first quarter of 2012 the terminal transhipped 2.96 million tons of petroleum products – which is a half-million ton or 24% more than in the same period last year. March has been successful for the company as well – close to 1.4 million tons of petroleum products were transhipped, which is 16% more than in March of the last year, setting a monthly record in the last 10 years (April 2002).

"This winter the work load in the terminal has been intense, apart from operating 24/7, to cope with the volumes. That is a great achievement of all the people working at VNT”, emphasizes the head of VNT.