The court rejected an appeal by environmental organizations asking it to strike down a government decision of December 31, 2004, on construction of the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline. The groups said the document could not be approved before a state ecological expert assessment had been carried out.
Speaking in court, a federal environmental oversight agency representative said the document on construction of the pipeline concerned organizing issues only, and that a feasibility study started only after it had been signed.
He added that ecological expert assessment was approved by an agency commission on March 6, 2006.
President Vladimir Putin said in late April that the ESPO pipeline should pass outside the drainage basin north of Lake Baikal, the world's largest body of fresh water and an environmentally sensitive zone on Unesco's list of World Heritage Site, upsetting state-owned oil pipeline monopolist Transneft's previous plans.
Designers chose the longest variant for the new ESPO route, with the pipe passing 200km from Baikal. The bypass route will be 1,920 km long and will pass through the Irkutsk Region, Yakutia and the Amur Region.
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 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.
