Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin took part in the inauguration ceremony of the oil pipeline section from Russia to the border with China, RBC reports. This pipeline is a part of the ‘Eastern Siberia – Pacific Ocean’ (ESPO) project.
PM Putin said the idea for the pipeline emerged six years ago. Firstly there were some discussions on the route of the project. Russia haD already finalized the project and China has 930m construction left.
The project of ‘East Siberia — Pacific’ oil pipeline was launched in December 2009 and is designed to pump up to 1.6 million barrels (220,000 tons) of crude oil per day from Siberia to the Far East and then on to China and the Asia-Pacific region, RIA Novosti says.
The Russia-China pipeline will stretch from the town of Skovorodino in the Amur region to the city of Daqing in China's northeastern Heilongjiang province.
In March, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said the construction of the pipeline would be finished by the end of the year and become fully operational in 2011.
Russia's largest oil company Rosneft, oil pipeline monopoly Transneft and China's state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) are partners in the project. In line with the contract, the Chinese side provided the Russian companies with a $25-billion loan to construct the pipeline. In exchange, the Russian side agreed to pump 15 million tons of oil per year via the pipeline in 2011-2030.
