OREANDA-NEWS. December 08, 2010. State-owned Odessa Commercial Sea Port (OCSP, Ukraine) offloaded on December 6 from the Isle of Man-flagged PARAMOUNT HANOVER tanker the millionth ton of Venezuelan crude oil shipped to Belarus, the stevedore company’s press service said. Overall, there were 78.1m tons of oils discharged yesterday from the tanker to onshore tanks.

The first shipment of Venezuelan oil of Santa Barbara grade was carried to Odessa at the end of April. By early December, the port has handled 12 crude carriers (the PARAMOUNT HANOVER is the thirteenth tanker), the total delivered volume – 924,400 tons. The transit cargo is transported from Odessa by rail to a Mozyr-based refinery in Belarus.

As Nicholas Pavliuk, the chief of OCSP stated at a meeting in early December, "freight flow of Venezuelan oil to the port of Odessa is strategically important, and the company's administration will make every effort to provide quality handling service."

State-run Odessa Commercial Sea Port is one of the largest ports of the Black Sea-Azov Basin. The OCSP’s facilities allow the stevedoring company to handle annually over 14 million tons of dry cargo and 14 million tons of liquid bulk cargo. Last year, OCSP’s freight throughput shrank by 19% year-over-year, to 28.007 million tons.