MOSCOW, July 18 (RIA Novosti) - Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Naryshkin has been appointed chief coordinator of the project to build the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) oil pipeline, a government source said Wednesday.
The announcement was made at a Cabinet session discussing the implementation of the pipeline project.
The ambitious East Siberia-Pacific Ocean oil pipeline, managed by state-run oil pipe operator Transneft, is slated to pump up to 1.6 million barrels per day of crude from Siberia to Russia's Far East, which will then be sent on to China and the Asia-Pacific region.
The pipeline will cover over 4,700 kilometers (2,900 miles), and is being built in two stages.
At the first stage, a 2,757-kilometer (1,713-mile) section will be built with a capacity of 30 million tons (220.5 million bbl) of oil per year. The project's first leg is estimated at $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 (1,304 miles) 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.
