According to the spokesman, Irkutsk Governor Alexander Tishanin has sent a letter to a Siberian voluntary economic association uniting 19 Federation members, in which he highlighted the environmental risks of the Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline project.
Environmentalists have opposed the $11.5 billion energy project, which will be run by Russia's state-owned oil pipeline monopoly Transneft, over the pipeline's proximity, about 800 meters, to Lake Baikal. Activists have called for the pipeline route to be moved further away from the unique lake, which is on the Unesco World Heritage List.
Tishanin said the pipeline, which is of great economic and political importance for Russia, could and had to be built, but it should be done so without jeopardizing the eco-system of Baikal.
According to the letter, the pipeline will run for about 100 kilometers (62 miles) along the shoreline of the lake. Experts have warned that in the event of an accident, about 3,000 metric tons of oil (about 60 bbl/d) would reach the lake within 20 minutes.
Another concern expressed in the letter is that the area is seismically unstable, which increases the risk of accidents.
"The Siberian division of the Russian Academy of Sciences has put forward alternative routes for the oil pipeline," the letter said. The route could go along the Lena River toward the railroad connecting Baikal and the Amur River in the Far East, bypassing Baikal and running across the Siberian plateau. Although it is longer, the route will involve far lower seismic risks and will be therefore less costly, the governor's letter said.
According to the governor, this option will engage northern areas of Siberia's Irkutsk Region and the south of the neighboring Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in Russia's Arctic Far East, all the while going around the lake.
In an effort to increase the awareness of the country's top officials about the project's dangers, public and environmental organizations in the region have started a petition to the federal authorities to block the project.
On Thursday, Russia's Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit from eight environmental organizations and ruled that the government's resolution to design and build the pipeline was legal.
Environmental organizations said they would appeal the court ruling in the next 10 days.
On January 25, the federal ecological oversight service rejected a critical environmental impact report from an environmental commission on the pipeline.
In late February, the commission signed off its negative environmental assessment of the project's feasibility study but the federal service extended the term of the commission's work and included new members. A few days later, the commission in its new format approved the feasibility study.
The pipeline is expected to pump up to 80 million metric tons a year (1.6 mln of bbl/d) from Siberia to the Russian Far East before being sent on to the Asia-Pacific region to Japan and energy-hungry China. The first stage of the pipeline's construction was initially expected to be completed by the end of 2008.
In February, Russian state-owned oil major Rosneft won licenses to develop three oil and natural gas deposits in Siberia, which will be used as the main source to fill the strategic oil pipeline.
