Pre-war period

In the early twentieth century the demand for oil products was increasing every year: diesel oil, fuel oil, crude oil were used in agriculture, power stations, industrial enterprises, kerosene - in aviation and for lighting. Later on, when in 1916 Asiatic Petroleum Company, which afterwards became part of SHELL, started refining oil in Europe, the first oil storage tanks were erected in the Port of Klaipeda. Starting with 1921 companies trading in oil products were founded in Klaipeda and they expanded storage capacities. At the end of the forties the major oil traders in Lithuania were SHELL and SOJUZNEFT, the latter traded in Russian oil products. Both of them owned the largest number of storage tanks for kerosene, gasoline and jet fuel. In 1930 - 1933 the Oil Port was deepened down to a draught of 7 metres, but this was not sufficient for larger tankers: fuel from ships at sea had to be reloaded onto smaller ones.

Oil products were sold by cooperative stores, by individual traders, by Lithuanian company LIETUKIS, which in 1937 purchased 5 tanks (total capacity of 5 600 m3  ), built a railway branch and a trestle, erected oil storage tanks in the neighbouring towns of Silute and Pagegiai and acquired 60 railway cars. Oil products were delivered by tankers from Batumi and Tuaps' - the ports on the Caucasian coast of the Black Sea. LIETUKIS even had plans to buy a tanker. However, operation of the civil port was interrupted by annexation of Klaip�da Region by Germany in 1939 and World War II which broke afterwards. After the war Klaipeda Oil Port was operating only as a fuel supply base for ships.