Posted on 03/25/2006 6:14:38 PM PST by blam
Energy tsars hungry for a new market
(Filed: 26/03/2006)
The Chinese President, Hu Jintao, has lobbied Vladimir Putin hard for the planned £6.5 billion East Siberian Pacific Pipeline, on which work is due to begin this year, to include a spur to the Chinese border.
If opened as planned in 2008, the main pipeline will pump up to 1.6 million barrels of oil a day to the Pacific port of Nakhodka.
Last week, China's National Petroleum Corporation offered to pay Transneft, the company building the pipeline, £228 million to cover the costs of a branch.
China is a leading buyer of oil from Russia - the world's second largest supplier - but must import it by train. The spur, which would branch out from Skovorodino, 40 miles from China's border, would increase both the speed and volume of delivery.
Trade between Russia and China, whose economy is booming, is expected to double during the next four years - much of it with Siberia, a region larger than China itself but with a population of 41 million, a tiny fraction of China's 1.3 billion people.
Russia exports oil and other raw materials, helping to fuel China's burgeoning economy, and, in return, imports cheap, manufactured goods.
Transneft's preferred route is the shortest possible and follows that of the Baikal-Amur railway, which runs 250 miles north of, and roughly parallel to, the Trans-Siberian railway, skirting the northern end of Lake Baikal. The company says there is less risk from a pipeline than from the freight wagon tankers that already pass near the lake.
Prof Yuri Trzhtsinsky, a seismologist at Irkutsk's Institute of the Earth's Crust, said no pipeline technology could withstand earthquakes on the scale of those recorded around the lake. "Within 20 minutes of a pipeline rupture, crude oil will be flooding Baikal's waters," he said.
But Semyon Vainshtok, the president of Transneft, says no alternative is as good and regards the dispute as geopolitical. "The puppet masters outside Russia do not want changes in the direction of Russia's oil development," he said.
"Our entire export potential is geared toward Europe ... Today we have the chance to open the Asian-Pacific market," he told a government newspaper.
President Putin has accused pipeline opponents of being saboteurs in the pay of foreign governments, and said last week that there was "no doubt" that a pipeline direct to China would be built.
Let them, by all means. If one is to believe the CIA factbook, the known oil reserves in Russia would cover the present level of extraction for 20 more years [not all can be extracted, but then some more reserves could be found - so these probably balance themselves out].
The Russkies are pretty much permanently through as a world power once they sell off their reserves (unless they come up with a realistic alternative and pronto).
Makes perfect sense to me. I am surprised it has taken this long.
If one is to believe the CIA factbook, the known oil reserves in Russia would cover the present level of extraction for 20 more years [not all can be extracted, but then some more reserves could be found - so these probably balance themselves out].==
Yeah if we beleive CIA factbook:). If not then we may find some more information.
For example. The proposed pipelines (accually its 2 not 1) will be drawn from East Sibirian gas fields. EAST not West Sibirian! Did you notice?
What does it mean? I never heard that CIA factbook mentioned East Sibirian gas or oil fields:).
You need (first) to lay off vodka, or at least start drinking less, and (second) to take a class in reading comprehension. Oil and gas were tabulated separately. The gas numbers were about 70-80 years.
It is because Japan has been screwed in the deal.
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