"There will be no quotas. Equal access will, as always, be the rule," he said in response to the question whether the Caspian Pipeline Consortium would have a guaranteed share in the pipeline's capacity.
He said that 147.8 billion rubles ($5.7 billion) of the total projected cost of 303.3 billion rubles ($11.7 billion) until 2009 had already been invested, with another 147.09 billion rubles ($5.7 billion) to be invested this year and 68.5 billion rubles ($2.6 billion) next year.
The CPC is a 935-mile oil pipeline from the Tengiz oil field in Kazakhstan to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk and the largest single U.S. investment in Russia. U.S. companies, including ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil, have contributed nearly one-half of the $2.6 billion investment.
The Eastern Siberia-Pacific pipeline aims to connect the oil-rich areas of East Siberia, so far untapped due to the lack of transport capacity, to major Asian oil markets. The project is to be completed by 2009.
