Russia plans to halt exports of oil products from foreign ports on the Baltic Sea by 2018, Nikolai Tokarev, the head of the oil pipeline company Transneft, told President Vladimir Putin on Sept. 12.

Tokarev said exports of crude products through non-Russian ports will fall to 5 million tonnes in 2016 from 9 million tonnes in 2015 and by 2018, they will stop completely.

"We will be shipping through our own ports as there is surplus capacity," Tokarev told Putin, according to a transcript of the meeting published on the Kremlin's website.

The giant Primorsk terminal and the neighboring Ust-Luga port allowed Russia more than a decade ago to suspend exports of crude via non-Russian Baltic ports. Since then, Russia has been gradually cutting exports of oil products via foreign ports, such as Latvia's Ventspils.

If product flows are suspended it would deal a blow to the transit revenues of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania and impact the world's largest oil trader, Vitol, which controls Ventspils.

But the move would boost several Russian ports. Ust-Luga port, which has a capacity of more than 30 million tonnes a year, is 74% controlled by billionaire Andrei Bokarev. Primorsk is operated by Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port Group.

The port of Vysotsk in the Leningrad region, which belongs to Russia's second-largest oil producer is also likely to benefit.