Known as the Sever (North) terminal the proposed development site is at Cape Petrovsky near the Trans-Siberian Railway-linked port of Vostochny – which is in the Sea of Japan and close to the North Korean border in southeastern Russia.
According to the relevant regional industry and transport department, construction will start in the Russian spring of 2015.
“The coal port construction project will provide employment for at least 1400 people and will require building over 50km of railways, 11 bridges and overpasses, four mooring facilities more than 900m long and laying new engineering networks,” Russian news agency ITAR-TASS reported.
“Design work is coming to a close and documentation is being approved with necessary agencies and departments.”
The 20Mtpa capacity is expected to be reached in 2025 while 6Mtpa of export capacity is expected in three years.
Of the 36 billion ruble ($A714 million) budget for the project – which is small by Australian standards given the scale of the development – the Russian government will cover about 64% of the spending with the rest coming from the private sector.
In mid-January investment bank Citi lowered its thermal and metallurgical coal price forecasts for 2015 on the premise that recession-bound Russia will flood the market with “cheap coal”.
Russia was especially seen as competitive in the coking coal export trade to China.
“Looking at weighted average costs by country, Russian producers now appear to have a roughly $20/t edge on average over Australian producers and even larger advantages over North American producers,” Citi said at the time.
