Under the agreement, Russia's dominant savings bank will grant a loan of 20 billion rubles ($740 million) to the pipeline monopoly to finance the first stage of building an oil pipeline to run from East Siberia to the Pacific, the Sberbank press office said.
Sberbank said the government considered the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline a major strategic state task to boost the export of Russian oil.
The pipeline is slated to pump up to 80 million metric tons of crude a year (1.6 mln bbl/d) from Siberia to Russia's Far East, which will then be exported to the Asia-Pacific region, in particular, to energy-hungry China.
The first stage of the project will connect Taishet in the Irkutsk Region to Skovorodino in the Amur Region in the Far East.
Construction work started in April 2006. More than 100 kilometers (62 miles) have been laid and 330 kilometers (205 miles) have been prepared for pipe installation.
The first stage of the project is to be completed in the second half of 2008.
