The Russian oil pipeline monopoly said after a board meeting Tuesday it was continuing work on a feasibility study to build an oil terminal at Kozmino with a capacity of 15 million metric tons (109,950,000 barrels) of crude per year, as part of the first leg of the Eastern Siberia-Pacific pipeline designed to pump oil from Siberia to Russia's Far East for exports to the Asia-Pacific region, in particular to energy-hungry China.
Transneft said it expected to approve project documentation with regional supervisory bodies in January and with federal bodies in March 2007.
The first leg of Transneft's Eastern Siberia-Pacific pipeline project was launched in April this year, and is expected to be completed in the second half of 2008. It will link Taishet, in the Eastern Siberian region of Irkutsk, to Skovorodino, in the Far East Amur Region.
The Kozmino terminal and the Taishet-Skovorodino pipeline, with an annual throughput capacity of 220.5 million barrels, constitute the first leg of the project.
The second leg will involve the construction of a Skovorodino-Kozmino pipeline, to pump 367.5 million barrels per year, and an increase in the Taishet-Skovorodino pipeline's capacity to 588 million barrels.
Initially estimated to cost $11.5 billion, the pipeline requires further investment, since its original route, passing near Lake Baikal, has been modified under pressure from environmentalists and local authorities, and later the president, due to the threat of spillages into world's largest freshwater body.
