Pipeliners

HOT 02.22.2005 Agence France-Presse - VLADIVOSTOK, Russia, Feb 22 (AFP) - Russia will beginning building a vital pipeline from Siberian oil fields to the Sea of Japan in summer, the Primorye region's deputy governor said Tuesday. "The pipeline's construction is due to begin this summer, on both ends at once -- in Taishet and the Perevoznaya bay" on the Sea of Japan, Viktor Gorchakov told the chief of Russia's sea and river transport agency, Vyacheslav Rukhsha. An oil terminal in Perevoznaya would be one of the first to be built, and would be supplied with oil by railway until the pipeline is complete, Gorchakov explained, adding that Russia planned to start shipping oil from Perevoznaya by September. The 4,118-kilometer (2,559-mile) pipeline will run from Taishet in Siberia's Irkutsk region to Perevoznaya, with 44 oil-pumping stations in between, and could transport up to 80 million tonnes a year. The project is estimated to cost 15 billion dollars (nine billion euros) although some analysts have forecast a price of 16 billion dollars and possibly more. Japan and China -- both starving for future energy supplies -- have fought furiously for the right to access Russia's untapped oil reserves. Tokyo won the upper hand after a protracted diplomatic battle when the Russian government late last year sided with the more expensive but potentially more profitable Pacific coast option. Tokyo has offered to provide seven billion dollars in soft loans for the pipeline and make further investments in Far Eastern Russia, which has been shunned by Japanese companies because the two nations have yet to sign a peace treaty ending World War II due to a lingering border dispute. However, ecologists furiously oppose the project, saying that placing an oil terminal in Perevoznaya could endanger the nearby national parks sheltering the last of the Far East leopards, as well as Vladivostok itself. Experts from the WWF environment protection fund have suggested the existing port of Nakhodka to provide the pipeline's access to the sea. vn-cal/pvh