President Vladimir Putin said in late April that the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline, should pass outside the drainage basin north of Lake Baikal, upsetting state-owned oil pipeline monopolist Transneft's previous plans to run it as close as 800 meters from the world's largest body of fresh water, an environmentally sensitive zone on Unesco's list of World Heritage Sites.
"We are expecting an environmental review on the ESPO feasibility study by the end of the year," the official said.
Designers chose the longest variant for the new ESPO route, 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. The cost of the first stage was initially estimated at $6.5 billion.
