MOSCOW, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Russia has set a low oil export schedule for its largest Black Sea port of Novorossiisk for March, surprising traders who now expect the country to boost supplies via other routes.
Market players are watching Russian export volumes partly for signs the country is willing to help the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries support prices.
Russian officials have said the world's second largest oil exporter could cut supplies to global markets by up to 320,000 barrels per day if prices remain low, but Moscow has instead increased exports in the past months.
A preliminary export schedule by pipeline monopoly Transneft showed on Wednesday that exports from Novorossiisk will fall by more than a tenth in March, or by 97,000 barrels per day, to 757,000 bpd versus 854,000 bpd in February.
Exports from Russia's largest Baltic Sea port of Primorsk will remain largely flat at 1.47 million bpd compared with 1.44 million bpd in February. Plans for other ports have not yet been released.
"Low loadings ex-Novo in March look very strange. The volume set for this port could be much higher," one trader said.
Maintenance works are not planned for Novorossiisk in March, another source said.
Although traders said they did not yet know the reasons for the lower volumes through Novorossiisk, they were unlikely to be due to export cuts in solidarity with OPEC, especially as export prices are now more alluring than domestic sales.
One trader said the reason might be to do with Transneft marketing strategy.
If the final loading schedule is released unchanged later this week, producers would reroute volumes to other destinations, primarily to the Druzhba pipeline to central Europe, traders said.
"March exports seem attractive compared to domestic deliveries, so everybody will try to export at maximum," one trader said.
Another trader said there was market talk Transneft could reopen supplies toward the Polish port of Gdansk, which have been shut since the start of the first quarter. [ID:nLI322754]. (Reporting by Gleb Gorodyankin, writing by Dmitry Zhdannikov, editing by Anthony Barker)