TOMSK, April 26 (RIA Novosti) - Transneft, Russia's state-owned oil pipeline operator, said Wednesday that the length and costs of a new route for a pipeline to pump Siberian crude to the Pacific could be estimated within two months.
The announcement came after President Vladimir Putin called for the $11.5-billion East Siberia-Pacific pipeline to be moved 40 kilometers (25 miles) away from Lake Baikal, the world's deepest fresh water body, to minimize its potential adverse effects on the unique eco-system.
Transneft chief executive Semyon Vainshtok said, "I cannot say at this point how much longer the new route will be, nor how much more it will cost, [as] this will take preliminary research. The new route will have to be studied first, and then we will be able to give precise figures."
Vainshtok said he had been unprepared for the decision, but that the project, which had originally been slated to run just 800 meters away from Baikal, would go ahead as scheduled.
"We will begin construction on Friday," he said. "Skovorodino [the pipeline's starting point] is ready for construction work."
The Transneft head added that the company would start building the pipeline simultaneously from both ends, draft a new feasibility study and conduct an environmental study.
The pipeline is slated to carry up to 80 million metric tons of crude a year (1.6 mln of bbl/d) from East Siberia, to the Asia-Pacific region, including Japan and energy-hungry China.
