Amid growing trade in St. Petersburg’s port, foreign neighbors complain that they are being discriminated against

One of the most perceptive foreign observers ever to write about Russia wasn’t impressed by the port of St. Petersburg when he first encountered the port authorities. "Russia is the land of useless formalities," noted Astolphe de Custine, the French traveler who alighted from a boat in St. Petersburg at the end of June 1839, noticing immediately that a handful of his fellow passengers, Russian princes, were passed through customs in three minutes, "while I had to struggle with every species of trickery for the space of three hours."

Once ashore, de Custine noted that "it is impossible to contemplate without a species of admiration an immense city which has sprung from the sea at the bidding of one man and which has to defend itself against a periodical inundation of ice and a perpetual inundation of water."

If those natural hazards weren’t bad enough, de Custine witnessed a maritime disaster in the Gulf of Finland that was almost entirely covered up at the time by the tsar’s court, the government and the press. A sudden storm had struck as dozens of vessels were making their way across the gulf from St. Petersburg to Peterhof, the palatial estate maintained by the tsar, for the empress’s annual birthday fete. Overloaded ferries, poor seamanship and inadequate weather precautions led to the capsizing of several vessels in the strong winds and high seas. Casualties were variously reported to be from three dozen to 2,000, but by word of mouth, as not an official word was released. "Every accident here," Custine observed, "is treated as an affair of state."

Amid the celebrations now under way for St. Petersburg’s tercentenary, there is cause for celebration. The port may be beginning to recover from the decay and corruption that de Custine diagnosed 150 years earlier. On the other hand, de Custine’s warning that the city is continually at the mercy of the elements is plain from the cargo reports for the first quarter of this year, one of the worst in memory for severe cold and thick ice.

Last year, according to federal Transport Ministry figures, total cargo turnover at St. Petersburg – the largest of Russia’s gateways after Novorossiisk – was 41.3 million tons, a gain of 12 percent on the year before. This amounted to two-thirds of the cargo transported through Russia’s ports on the Baltic Sea. It was also measurably the largest turnover of all ports in the eastern sector of the Baltic – 3.4 million tons ahead of Tallinn (Estonia) and almost 13 million tons ahead of Ventspils (Latvia).

The non-Russian ports complain that the Russian government is actively discriminating against them for political reasons, while the Finnish authorities complain about the rapid growth of oil transportation from St. Petersburg and the new oil port of Primorsk nearby.

Russian maritime sources say there is nothing political about the oil and import booms on which St. Petersburg port has been riding. The safety record speaks for itself, they add – just three minor vessel accidents in the past two years, no injuries and very small and recoverable fuel-tank spills.

"The problem of ecological safety standards has been politicized," says Sergei Grigoriev, executive vice president of Transneft, the Russian crude-oil pipeline operator. "It is the Finnish ports that have been violating maritime standards. Recently [at Primorsk] we refused to accept a Finnish tanker because its ballast water was substandard. Our norm is that we can discharge four kilograms of petroleum products from ballast per year. At Porvoo [in Finland] the norm is up to 12 tons per year."

The rivalry between Ventspils, Primorsk and St. Petersburg is, according to the Latvians, a political blockade amounting to Russian retaliation for Latvia’s decision to enter the NATO alliance. According to Grigoriev, "the Latvians have persuaded [U.S. President George] Bush it is an economic blockade. Still, deliveries by rail are expanding. Transnefteprodukt [Russia’s refined products transport operator] has raised its deliveries by 50 percent. If there had been a political decision, all Russian deliveries would have stopped. It’s a mistake of the Latvian authorities to make this political."

Just over one quarter of St. Petersburg’s throughput and the leading item of cargo consists of oil products. Metals are next, comprising 22 percent, followed by containers at 16 percent, chemical cargos 10 percent, timber 7 percent, refrigerated cargos 6 percent and coal almost 3 percent. In terms of growth rates, sources estimate the box trade at St. Petersburg has had the greatest momentum, registering a 21 percent gain last year over 2001, while oil products gained by 18 percent, food by 16 percent, chemicals by the same margin, timber by 15 percent and reefers by 8 percent. Coal transportation, which is planned to be shifted to Ust-Luga on the Gulf of Finland, fell by 28 percent. Among the metals exports, steel shipments grew by 19 percent last year and nonferrous metals by 22 percent.

With the launch of the Baltic Bulker Terminal at the end of 2001, steady growth in mineral fertilizer shipments has also been registered.

The latest figures for the first quarter of 2003 show the impact of the severe winter. Total cargo tonnage fell 14 percent, compared to the same period of 2002. The winter ban on vessels with low ice class ratings cut the number of portcalls by almost 30 percent; the biggest impact was felt by metals exporters. Notwithstanding, the continuing boom in domestic consumer demand powered the box trade, with the First Container Terminal reporting a volume of 107,924 TEUs, up by 9 percent.

According to Deputy Railways Minister Khasyan Zyabirov, economic revival, growing demand and rising cargo volumes represent only part of the problem. The Rail and Transportation Ministries "have been trying hard to resolve the traffic congestion in the Russian ports since last November, when a joint session of the two ministries was held. But as of the first quarter of 2003 the problems that existed in cargo traffic through the ports continue to exist." He reported that Railways Ministry data show that, last year, the rail system carried 350 million tons of export-import and transit cargo, 45 million more tons, or 15 percent more, than the year before. Of this aggregate, 127 million tons were delivered by rail to the ports. He acknowledged that tariff increases have created a profit incentive for the railways to favor export shipments, but noted that the high degree of specialization of port facilities, inherited from the Soviet period, has intensified the problem of congestion, as railcars and cargoes have piled up outside the loading wharves. St. Petersburg was badly affected in the last half of 2002, he admitted.