Description

Following [*4, p. *6], Russian LPG first became available to Western Europe in the mid****0s. For some time, two Russian pressure tankers, Ķegums and Krāslava, shipped ammonia and some LPG across the Atlantic to Cuba. In ***5, Gazocean (the French company founded by Rene Boudet in ***7) was able to sign a FOB contract for **0,**0 tons per year of propane out of the Baltic port of Riga. It was shipped to Petit Couronne in France under a government-to-government deal.

Russias huge gas reserves gave it a considerable LPG potential, particularly, in Western Siberia. The main problem, however, was logistical, i.e., how to move the product to the market. The construction of a dedicated 1,***-kilometer gas liquids pipeline across the Urals — from South Balyk in Tyumen Oblast to Minnibaevski in European Russia — appeared to solve the problem. Unfortunately, the line suffered from a devastating explosion in June ***9 near Ufa caused by the spark from a passing Transsiberian train and never operated beyond Tobolsk. Since then, LPG export from Russia depended on railcars. The state plant Azovmash in Ukraine built the first generation of Russian LPG railcars. In ***1, the number of railcars in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union amounted to about *5,**0