The restriction arrived as a document. Russian Railways posted an order on its own site limiting loading toward the stations Novorossiysk and Novorossiysk-export from 13 to 22 August, and gave no reason for it. Ten days is a long embargo to impose without a sentence of explanation, and no Russian federal body has offered one.
The context is public. On the night of 12 August the Krasnodar region was attacked; three people were killed, one of them eight years old, and 24 were hurt. Novorossiysk lost water for part of the day and Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said supply was back by Tuesday evening. The city declared an emergency regime. President Volodymyr Zelensky described the operation as a strike on the naval base and named the weapons used: Palianytsia jet drones, Neptune missiles and naval drone systems.
Then the terminals began to go quiet. The United Grain Company said infrastructure at the grain terminal of the Novorossiysk Combine of Bread Products was damaged. On 13 August Delo Group announced that its KSK grain terminal had suspended operations altogether, halting the unloading of road and rail deliveries, the loading of grain onto ships and everything else, to protect staff and infrastructure. Both announcements came from the operators; the port authority said nothing.
The municipal control centre added the last layer. Naval base exercises ran in three windows on Thursday and run again today, from 11:00 to 13:00 and 21:00 to 23:00 Moscow time, with all small craft banned from the harbour, diving prohibited, and live artillery fire from the moles of the naval harbour. The stated drill is repelling naval drones and unmanned aircraft.
Every closure announced this week lands on something that reaches the sea by rail or by quay. Kazakh crude does neither.
Kazakhstan’s export point is not the commercial port. Crude from Tengiz, Kashagan and Karachaganak arrives at Yuzhnaya Ozereyevka by pipeline and leaves through single point moorings offshore, roughly fifteen kilometres from the berths that stopped this week. A rail order cannot reach a pipeline. A ban on small craft cannot reach a mooring buoy. That is why the grain has stopped and the oil has not.
The cost has moved instead. Freight on the Novorossiysk to Augusta run reached 440,948 dollars a day, the highest in Baltic Exchange data compiled by Bloomberg from July 2008, and 140 per cent above where it stood when the current attacks began in early July. Traders told Bloomberg that CPC differentials have fallen because freight and insurance have risen; the grade traded at its weakest in more than a year on Tuesday in the Platts window. Shipments of CPC Blend are set to come in a third below the original plan for August.
The exposure is European. The shipping association BIMCO calculated on 5 August that almost 75 per cent of this year’s CPC exports went to European Union countries, and that Kazakhstan supplied 9.6 per cent of the bloc’s petroleum oil imports in the first quarter. A third less CPC Blend this month is a European supply question as much as a Kazakh one, and the discount is paid by the seller.
Astana has published nothing. The energy ministry’s last public operating figure remains the 100,000 tonnes a day of intake it reported for 1 August, and the consortium itself has said nothing to the public since 30 July, which is fifteen days. Neither silence is new. Neither has been explained.
The undertaking Washington obtained from Kyiv covers the pipe, the terminal and certain vessels. It says nothing about a railway order, a damaged elevator, or a gunnery schedule that closes the water twice a day. Kazakhstan’s route survives this week because of where it happens to sit, and a location is not a guarantee.