On April 5, 2018, Transneft announced that it commissioned the Volgograd Refinery – Tinguta – Tikhoretsk – Novorossiysk petroleum products trunk pipelines (PPTPs), a part of the company’s Yug project.

The implementation of the Yug project entails creating an infrastructure suitable for both pipeline transportation of diesel fuel in the direction of Novorossiysk, a Russian port, and for exporting up to six million tons of crude oil per year from Russia’s Black Sea coast to European countries. The commissioning of the Yug project’s PPTPs was preceded by successful system tests at peak oil pumping modes using an agent, with a number of technical measures taken during the trial.

The project makes it possible to receive additional diesel fuel from tank cars at the Tinguta railway station in the Volgograd region, allowing refineries that are not directly connected to the trunk line system to pump their petroleum products via the pipeline. The Tinguta pumping station will have a railway loading rack and a tank farm with capacity of 80 thousand cubic meters.

Transneft began filling the petroleum products pipelines of the Yug project with diesel fuel in November 2017. As of December 2017, diesel fuel has been transported from the Volgograd refinery to the port of Novorossiysk to the tune of about 250,000 tons per month as part of integrated testing. By the end of 2018, Transneft will deliver up to four million tons of fuel across the new pipeline.

Launching the Yug project will enable oil companies to optimize their logistics costs thanks to the use of pipeline transportation and also to spare capacity for passenger services on the North Caucasus railway line.

Additional connections to several refineries in the South of Russia to the Yug project have been worked out, including those for the Ilsky refinery, the Afipsky refinery, the Slavyansk ECO, and Krasnodareconeft, which runs the Krasnodar refinery. An essential requirement for connecting these facilities to the Yug project is that each facility be upgraded for the production of Euro-5 diesel fuel.

In the long term, Transneft anticipates connecting the Samara cluster of refineries, with the throughput capacity reaching six million tons at the section from Samara to Volgograd and up to 11 million tons at the section from Volgograd to Novorossiysk.