OAO Transneft, Russia’s oil pipeline operator, will begin loading its first tanker of Kazakh crude from Ust-Luga port on the Baltic Sea on July 20, Igor Dyomin, a company spokesman, said by telephone today.

The port, which opened in March, is the end point of the Baltic Pipeline System-2, which allows Russian exports to bypass Belarus. Transneft also delivers Kazakh oil to Russia’s Baltic Primorsk terminal.

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