Russian government approves construction of sea terminal for shipping of coal from Elga

KHABAROVSK. June 14 (Interfax) - Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has approved changes in the territorial planning scheme of Russia to include construction of the Port Elga sea terminal near Cape Manorsky in the Khabarovsk Territory.

The document was published on the official legal information website.

The government has approved the construction of the Port Elga sea terminal for coal shipping with a projected capacity of 30 million tonnes per year.

The company Elgaugol (controlled by Albert Avdolyan's A-Property) has begun construction of a private railway (the Pacific Railway) near the Chumikan settlement (Khabarovsk Region) at Cape Manorsky in the Udskaya Bay of the Okhotsk Sea to export coal from the Elga deposit in Yakutia, Khabarovsk Territory Governor Mikhail Degtyarev was cited as saying earlier. Construction of the 500 km long railway will take no more than 2 years, with commissioning planned for 2024.

This year, Elgaugol will also begin construction of its own port with a capacity of 30 million tonnes per year, the governor said.

In August 2021, the company submitted a project passport to the Russian Transport Ministry, according to which construction was to last five years (2023-2027), with commissioning due in 2028. The cost of the project was estimated at 97.1 billion rubles at that time.

Elgaugol then decided to speed up the project by abandoning the construction of an extension to the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM). Elgaugol has already increased the throughput capacity of the existing branch line from the deposit to Ulak station on the BAM to 24 million tonnes per year and plans to expand it to 30 million tonnes per year in the near future.

The Elga coal deposit is Russia's largest and one of the world's largest coking coal deposits and is located in Yakutia. Its reserves amount to about 2.2 billion tons by JORC standards. Previously, A-Property estimated the cost of developing the deposit at 130 billion rubles.

According to a citation from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities dated June 14, 90% of shares in Elgaugol belong to A-Property LLC, 5% to A-Property Capital and another 5% to RT-Business Development LLC (a Rostec entity).