Putin's geo-political jig saw puzzle continues to take shape Pt. 34

Today,Transneft, the Industry and Energy Ministry, and the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade should have agreed a final construction schedule for the Taishet-Nakhodka Pipeline which is another piece in Putin's vast geo-political jig saw puzzle that will provide the Russian state with energy hegemony from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Half of Japan's energy is met by imported oil and 90% percent of its oil is from the Middle East. It is estimated that if Russia exports a million barrels of oil on a daily basis, as Japan is planning for sometime in the future, this will reduce Japan's reliance on the Middle East to 65 percent. Both China and Japan desperately need Russia oil.

The Taishet-Nakhodka Pipeline is huge, 2,581 miles long (4,130 kilometers), and costing between US$15 billion and $18 billion.The Trans-Alaska Pipeline 800-mile (1,280-kilometer) completed in 1977 cost $9 billion. 80 million tons (72 million metric tons) of oil a year. The new pipeline at full capacity, will transport 1.6 million barrels of Russian oil to the East a day, 80 million tons (72 million metric tons) of oil a year.

The Taishet-Nakhodka Pipeline is one the key project in Russia's overall plan to more fully capitalize on its oil resources. The overall national plan envisages developing a number of pipe to ports in Albania, Croatia and Greece, as well as northward to a Barents Sea port that would serve North America.

East Siberia's untapped oil fields alone are estimated at 20 billion barrels. As a nation, Russia has proven oil reserves between 50 billion and 100 billion barrels (Saudi is said to have reserves of 262 billion barrels).

Oil from the Taishet-Nakhodka Pipeline will actually start arriving at the Pervoznaya port terminal well before the project is finished. With the pipeline's first stages completed, Russian officials say that they'll begin rail-shipping extracted oil to the country's Pacific coast. To facilitate those shipments, BAR says that it will build second and even third tracks parallel to its existing lines.

The Taishet-Nakhodka Pipeline will be built and run by Transneft, Russia's state pipeline monopoly. Created in 1993 as the legal descendant to the Soviet Oil Ministry's Central Production Department for Oil Transport and Supply.

The Japanese financed 48" pipe begins in the Siberian city of Taishent, the site of the Baikal-Amur Railway's (BAR) largest station. The pipeline's initial stages will run near BAR routes, to be used to transport oil until the project is completed in 2010.

The pipeline ends on the coast of the Sea of Japan at the port of Pervoznaya near the city of Nakhodka which will be have to be developed to handle the tanker traffic.

Between these points 30,000 workers will build 48 pipeline sections that cut across major rivers the Chuma, the Ilim, the Lena and the Upper Angara, further 115 sections will cross highways and rail lines.

The government-owned Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC will finance as much as 80 % of the pipeline's total costs through low-interest loans. It will be the largest-ever offshore project that the Japanese government has financed.

Meanwhile rail shipments to China have increased five-fold to 15 million tons (13.5 metric tons), which was previoulsy undertaken by Yukos the now dismantled company run by now jailed Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Pic Oil terminal near the city of Nakhodka