RIA Novosti reported that Russia's state run pipeline operator Transneft has invested RUB 160 billion in the East Siberia Pacific Ocean pipeline being built to transport crude eastward. Mr Semyon Vainshtok president of Transneft said that "To date we have invested RUB 160 billion."
He said that the crude from West Siberia would not be pumped through the ESPO pipeline as East Siberian oil would be enough to fill the pipe. He added that "Fears about fulfilling the pipeline capacity have not materialized. We have already received orders for 36 million tons of oil from East Siberia."
Mr Vainshtok also said Transneft had already built 1,000 kilometers of the ESPO pipeline or more than a third of the project's first stage, adding that the company had reached the planned level of building 5 kilometers per day.
The East Siberia Pacific Ocean pipeline project with a design capacity of 80 million tonnes of crude annually was launched in April 2006 and is set to transit Siberian oil to the Asia Pacific market. The pipeline will cover over 4,700 kilometers and is being built in two stages.
At the first stage, a 2,757 kilometer section will be built with a capacity of 30 million tons of oil per year. The project's first leg is estimated at USD 11 billion and will be commissioned in December 2008. It will link Taishet, in East Siberia's Irkutsk Region to Skovorodino in the Amur Region in Russia's Far East.
The second leg will stretch for 2,100 kilometers from Skovorodino to the Pacific. It will pump 367.5 million barrels of oil annually. The second stage also envisages an increase in the Taishet Skovorodino pipeline's capacity to 588 million barrels.
Transneft and Russian energy giant Gazprom have set up a working group to discuss the construction of a gas pipeline along the East Siberia Pacific Ocean oil pipe project, adding that his company was prepared to provide consulting assistance to the gas monopoly. The construction of a gas pipeline to run parallel to the ESPO project is conditioned by the structure of hydrocarbons at East Siberian deposits that are rich in petroleum associated gas and condensate.
