Russia Transneft oil shipping fee seen up 10-12 pct

By Tanya Mosolova

MOSCOW, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Russia's decision to raise an oil shipping fee component will increase costs of oil deliveries by pipelines by 10-12 percent and further spur Russia's runaway inflation, analysts said on Wednesday.

Russia's tariffs agency (FST) said on Tuesday it had allowed oil pipeline monopoly Transneft to raise its oil dispatching fee to 15.41 rouble per tonne per 100 kilometres, but gave no comparison or figure for the new overall tariff.

The dispatching fee is a special charge for coordination, which along with the pumping fee constitutes the overall tariff for shipping oil by pipelines inside and outside Russia, the world's second largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia.

Analysts said the dispatching fee rose by 19.6 percent based on Transneft's latest disclosure of the fee at 12.89 rouble at the end of last year.

"Our calculations show that this translates into a growth of about 11.7 percent in the average tariff, given the approximate 40/60 split between the pumping and dispatching components," said Alex Burgansky from Renaissance Capital.

Transneft declined to disclose the increase of the average fee and said that it will fulfill the service's decision no matter how unpopular it could be with oil firms.

"We are a state company and FST is a state agency. We have to fulfill their decisions," said Transneft's vice-president Mikhail Barkov.

The tariff agency said Transneft needs fresh money to pay interests on the debt it raised to build a new link to Asia, a major project meant to connect Russian oilfields with Asian markets by the end of 2009.

BOOSTS OIL SECTOR COSTS

Analysts at Troika Dialog brokerage said the move would further boost costs for oil companies, which are already complaining that a heavy tax and tariff burden prevents them from investing in new fields to support declining oil output.

"The government looks to be following a rather interesting policy approach toward the oil sector," said Troika's Valery Nesterov, who estimates the overall tariff increase at 10 percent.

"On the one hand, it raises costs industry-wide by forcing producers to bankroll the pipeline regardless of whether they will use the route. On the other, it is sending mixed signals on tax cuts," Nesterov said in written research.

Poor oil output performance has become a major concern of the government, which has offered a series of tax breaks to oil companies to revive production growth. It has said it will consider more tax breaks in the future.

Transneft is usually allowed to revise its fees at the end of each year and they already rose by 19.4 percent from January.