President Vladimir Putin ordered that the oil pipeline should be re-routed from the original plan, which would have seen it run within 800 meters from Baikal, in April and today Transneft head Semyon Vainshtok said the new route would be 10 times further away than Putin had suggested was the absolute minimum.
"The pipeline will be 400km longer and require building additional 300km (190 miles) of roads, alongside electric facilities," he said. "We will complete construction within the planned timeframe."
Putin said changing the $11.5-billion pipeline's route would help resolve environmental problems connected with the lake, which is on Unesco World Heritage List.
The first leg of the pipeline will run from Taishet in Siberia to the Amur-Region town of Skovorodino near the Chinese border. Vainshtok said construction in Skovorodino would start in just over a week's time.
"On April 28 we launched construction in Taishet, and construction from Skovorodino will begin in nine days," he said, adding that the company was considering two routes for the pipeline.
"We will make a final decision on the pipeline's route in four months," he said.
The East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline is slated to carry up to 80 million metric tons of oil a year (1.6 mln of bbl/d) to the Asia-Pacific region, most likely Japan and energy-hungry China. The first stage of construction is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2008.
