Ventspils
USSR's leading oil export port via Occidental Petroleum's 1970s terminal. Deepest eastern Baltic harbor (17.5m). 2022 sanctions ended Russian oil transit.
Ventspils was built to export oil from the Soviet interior—and still does, with complications. When Armand Hammer's Occidental Petroleum arrived in the 1970s, they built a terminal that made Ventspils the USSR's leading crude oil port. That infrastructure didn't disappear with the Soviet Union.
The port's advantages are geographic: ice-free year-round, 17.5 meters deep (deepest on the eastern Baltic since 1998), and the first Baltic port connected to the Russian railway network. By 1912, Ventspils exceeded Liepāja in freight volume.
The history runs deeper. The Livonian Order built a castle here in 1290. Duke Jacob Kettler (1642-1682) made Ventspils Courland's leading port and shipyard—135 vessels built and sold to Europe.
Since 1997, the Freeport of Ventspils has operated as a Special Economic Zone. But Russian oil transit collapsed after 2022 sanctions. By 2026, Ventspils must prove it can diversify beyond the petroleum infrastructure that defined it—or face the resource town's classic fate.