The terminal at the Skovorodino station of the Trans-Baikal railways is part of the ambitious East Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) oil pipeline, which is slated to pump up to 1.6 million barrels per day of crude from Siberia to Russia's Far East, which will then be sent onto China and the Asia-Pacific region.
"The oil terminal at Skovorodino railway station is expected to handle 15 million metric tons (110 million barrels) of oil per year. This will make it possible to virtually double the volume of oil shipments on the Trans-Baikal railway," the RZD press office said.
The construction of the railway oil terminal, the largest in Russia, is planned to be completed in the third quarter of 2008. By then, the infrastructure at Skovorodino railway station will have been modernized, the RZD press office said.
The ESPO project was launched in April 2006 and the first leg of the pipeline, 2,700 kilometers (1,677miles) long and estimated at costing $11 billion, will be commissioned in December 2008.
At the first stage of the project's implementation, oil will be pumped from Taishet, in the East Siberian region of Irkutsk, to Skovorodino, in the Amur region, in Russia's Far East where it will be reloaded onto railway tanks for delivery to Kozmino Bay on Russia's Pacific Coast.
