Pipeliners

05-01-2006 RBC News - The construction of the first section of the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline began in Taishet (Irkutsk region) on Friday. General contractor for the project is the Stroisistema construction firm, based in Omsk, said Anatoly Bezverkhov, General Director of the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean Company (Transneft's subsidiary responsible for the pipeline project). 2.7 kilometers of pipelines have been laid so far. The pipeline will be built at a speed of between 200 and 300 meters a day, Bezverkhov said. "We will work fast in order to complete the construction by the second half of 2008 as planned," he stressed. The construction of the first section of the pipeline would be completed on time, despite the transfer of part of the pipeline to the north of Baikal Lake. Most probably, Transneft would abandon plans to take the pipeline to Buryatiya and Yakutiya, and it would go from Irkutsk to Yakutia, Bezverkhov said. On April 26 Russian President Putin asked Transneft President Semyon Vainshtok to lay the pipeline as far from Baikal Lake as possible. The project will be implemented in two stages. The first section of the pipeline, from Taishet to Skovorodino in the Amur region, with a capacity of 30 million tons, will be built by the second half of 2008, as well as an oil terminal on the Pacific coast. During the second stage, a pipeline will be built from Skovorodino to Perevoznaya Bay in the Primorsky region; it will have a capacity of 50 million tons a year. The total cost of the project is about $11.5 billion, of which $6.6 billion is the cost of the first stage.