Belarus still has plans to build a port near Murmansk in northwest Russia to handle its potash and fertilizer shipments, according to an Interfax report this week, citing an interview with Murmansk Oblast Governor Andrei Chibis
Chibis said that Belarus sees Murmansk as “a promising port” and is “working on issues related to shipments to China.” According to the governor, the current proposal, which still needs to be “packaged and finalized,” is a request from Belarus for a separate port with a transshipment capacity of 5-7 million mt/y.
Several options have been proposed for the location of the Belarusian port. In December 2022, the governor of the Murmansk region said work on the design of the Belaruskali fertilizer terminal could begin on the western shore of the Kola Bay in 2023, and construction could begin in 2024.
Belarus began reorienting transshipments of its potash exports to Russian ports and has also increased exports to China by rail after Lithuania’s government terminated the railway transit contract between the country’s state-owned railway company Lietuvos Geležinkeliai (LTG) and Belaruskali as of Feb. 1, 2022, over national security concerns (GM Jan. 14, 2022). The Lithuanian government’s decision came in the wake of EU and US sectoral sanctions on Belarus, which included, among other things, a ban on the trading and transit of potash.
The removal of the Lithuanian rail route effectively blocked Belaruskali’s key export route. Before the imposition of Western sanctions, the Belarus producer and its marketing/export arm, Belarusian Potash Co. (BPC), shipped 10-11 million mt of potash annually through the Lithuanian port of Klaipėda.