... kilometers west of St. Petersburg along the southern shore of the gulf lies Ust-Luga, another newly built port that went into operation in 2001. The Ust-Luga Group, the port's developers, are ambitious, having recently made public bold plans to double cargo shipping every year (annual turnover is currently 22.7 million tons), open a new car terminal with a capacity of 250,000 cars per year and invest about 52.5 billion rubles in rail links. By 2018 they even plan to construct a new freight airport for transferring...

A Russian cargo ship loaded with weapons is en route to Syria and was due to arrive at a Syrian port over the weekend, Al Arabiya television said in a report that Western diplomats in New York described as credible. UNITED NATIONS...

... light fuel similar to gasoline — to have surpluses of those fuels for export. The Syrian gasoline cargo arrived aboard the tanker Alvan last weekend, docking at an Iranian terminal in the Gulf near Bandar Abbas, according to industry sources and ship-tracking data. Like many vessels associated with Iranian firms, the Alvan has repeatedly changed names and ownership to skirt sanctions on Iran. According to DNV, an organization that classifies ships, giving them documents necessary for insurance...

... of the climate where you live, you can always comfort yourself with the fact that it's probably colder in Murmansk, where snow can linger into May and reappear in September. Murmansk Population: 307,700 Main industries: Shipping, fishing City manager: Andrei Sysoyev Founded in 1916 Interesting fact: Murmansk is home to the tallest building in the Arctic, the 16-story Arktika hotel. Helpful contacts: Mikhail Sokolov, deputy city manager and chairman of the committee...

A Russian Soyuz craft carrying three astronauts has docked with the International Space Station, putting the crew in place for the imminent arrival of the first-ever privately owned cargo ship to the orbiting lab. ALMATY, Kazakhstan — A Russian Soyuz craft carrying three astronauts has docked with the International Space Station, putting the crew in place for the imminent arrival of the first-ever privately owned cargo ship...

... Andrei Krainy told Interfax on Tuesday. After the anti-poaching deal with neighboring China and Japan takes effect around the end of this year, only legally caught crab will be exported, Krainy said. The fisheries agency chief said not a single poaching ship was registered in South Korean ports in recent months following the enactment of a similar agreement with South Korea. Krainy also said Tuesday that fish deliveries will continue this summer via the Northern Sea Route, also known as the Northeast...

Russia shipped a fifth of its overall liquefied natural gas production to Japan last year, in addition to the originally planned volume, as a response to the nuclear plant emergency there. Russia shipped a fifth of its overall...

... Magistralniye Elektricheskiye Seti Sibiri (Siberia's Main Power Transmission Lines) (117 Ulitsa Ady Lebedevoi; +7 3912-659-500; fsk-ees.ru ) is a local unit of the Federal Grid Company and supplies electricity to more than 20 million people in 10 regions. The ships that dock in Krasnoyarsk look somewhat different. Modern passenger and cargo vessels arrive at the port, one of the biggest in Siberia, with shipments of equipment, construction materials and other supplies. For one vessel, Krasnoyarsk has become...

Enel's interest in the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, or TAP, project that aims to pump Azeri gas to Italy will boost TAP's chances of being picked as the pipeline of choice, analysts said. Producers in the Shah Deniz-2 field in Azerbaijan plan to ship about 16 billion cubic meters a year through Turkey into Europe from 2017 or 2018. "Enel is interested in projects that bring gas to the country," Enel chief executive Fulvio Conti said Wednesday. Asked whether such projects included the...

... team. Artur Stepanyants, 53, whose saga was reported in The Moscow Times in March of last year, was arrested by Ukrainian law enforcement officers in 2010 while purchasing Soviet-made naval equipment he had been planning to use for spare parts for the ships of the Russian naval fleet in Sevastopol. According to documents released during the trial, the seller of the equipment was an informant for the local security services. Stepanyants — who was arrested during the tenure of Ukrainian President...

... consummated, would extend the logistical reach of Summa, an acquisitive group owned by Ziyavudin Magomedov that actively trades oil and is looking to branch into agricultural commodities. FESCO's asset portfolio includes a seaport in Vladivostok and a shipping fleet, railroad company Russian Troika and 21 percent of state-controlled rail group Transcontainer. The deal follows a slump in FESCO's earnings last year to $19 million despite 29 percent growth in revenues to $1.03 billion. Generalov became...

... General's Office report said. The report said more than $320 million worth of illegally obtained property and funds had been seized as a result of requests to foreign governments, including $300 million in Switzerland allegedly embezzled from state-owned shipping company Sovkomflot by businessman Yury Nikitin, Interfax reported. Nikitin is wanted by Russia on theft charges stemming from a case opened in 2005, when authorities accused him and four associates of stealing more than $700 million from Sovkomflot...

... Afghanistan could stand to earn more than $1 billion annually in transit fees. Afghan leader Hamid Karzai predicts maintaining the pipeline could provide employment for 50,000 people in Afghanistan alone. The gas pipeline across Afghanistan, projected to ship 33 billion cubic meters a year, has been actively backed by the United States. It would give Turkmenistan a further export route for its copious energy reserves and generate revenue for Afghanistan. It currently exports to Russia and Iran, and also...

... ahead of elections. However, it is unlikely to dent crude exports, as Russia uses pipelines as its main method of transporting oil abroad. Russia's transportation safety watchdog has banned the use of rail wagons designed to handle light oil products to ship crude and heavy fuel oil, following several rail accidents. That has cut the number of wagons in operation, several oil refineries said, curbing supplies and forcing them to cut production runs. Midsize producer Orsknefteorgsintez, said its heavy...

... Al-Akkari said Al Badia buys about 20,000 tons of Russian coal per month, satisfying all of its needs. "Because of the sanctions, we are only buying Russian coal," Al-Akkari said. He added that many of the deliveries are now made using Syrian ships instead of larger international vessels. Earlier this month, a trader said Syrian buyers were willing to pay a premium of $3 to $4 per ton for steam coal, although financing difficulties often forced payment delays of up to two months. However,...

... intense diplomatic negotiations, the bikers were released Thursday to the Russian Embassy, where they waited over the weekend for their paperwork to be finalized to leave Iraq. But their motorcycles remain at the embassy, which has contacted several shipping companies to find out how much it will cost to send them to Russia. “After that, we’ll pass the figures over to the bikers so they can decide which option suits them best,” said Sergei Cherkasov, spokesman for the Russian...

... "limited in its initial phase" but nonetheless "can provide real protection against a ballistic missile attack," according to a statement released by the United States presidential administration. With the change in status, U.S. ships in Europe can now operate under NATO command when the need arises, the statement said. Apart from the issue of missile defense, NATO country leaders said that while progress had been made over the 10 years that have passed since the creation of...

... Russia as the only country able to shuttle astronauts to the space station, at the rate of $60 million per passenger. Several private firms are seeking to get commercial space programs off the ground, including SpaceX, which hopes to launch its Dragon ship from Cape Canaveral to the space station May 19. NASA has a video of Tuesday's launch. 179742

... different project configurations under discussion now, but Gazprom will keep a 51 percent stake," a source close to the consortium said Friday. Shtokman still aims to begin gas deliveries to Europe via the Nord Stream pipeline in 2016 and start shipping liquefied natural gas around the world beginning in 2017. The first exploration well was drilled in 1988. But backers of the project have been unable to reach a final decision to make investments that at the initial stage could total $15 billion...

... Soon after Obama took office in 2009, he revamped the program with a plan calling for slower interceptors that would be upgraded gradually over four phases, culminating with the newest versions in 2020. The early phases call for using Aegis radars on ships and a more powerful radar based in Turkey. Later phases call for moving Aegis radars to Romania and Poland. NATO says the future ballistic missile defense system passed a significant technical test on April 4 and 5 during a series of simulated...