Russian firms divided over Asian pipeline fees
MOSCOW: Russia’s pipeline monopoly promised on Friday attractive shipping fees for a planned giant pipeline to Asia, but its future key clients said they were still too high to develop untapped fields in East Siberia.
The head of pipeline monopoly Transneft, Semyon Vainshtok, told business daily Kommersant the average shipping fee on the route from the Siberian region of Irkutsk to the Pacific coast or to China would be $49.9 per tonne - lower than expected but twice as high as the current fees from West Siberia to Europe.
“We are going to apply a special tariff - the closer (oil is produced) the more expensive it would be, the further, the cheaper. Then oil firms would be free to decide which market (Asian or European) they prefer,” he said.
Transneft, the world’s biggest pipeline system, wants to build a $10-billion-plus 1.6 million barrels per day pipeline, which would be Russia’s first to Asia.
The government has this week approved its construction in stages with the first 1,000 km stretch of the entire 4,200 km (2,625 mile) pipeline to be built by mid-2008.
It will run from Irkutsk to Skovorodino in the Amur region or mid-way to the Pacific. A new oil terminal on the Pacific will be built simultaneously.
Oil will be taken from Skovorodino by rail to China and the Pacific, while the link can be extended to both directions at later stages. The first stage will have a capacity of 600,000 bpd.
Transneft has said first shipments via the pipeline would rely on crude from West Siberia as the region is already connected to Irkutsk, but that it would need 1 million bpd from East Siberia to fully fill the pipeline.
Oil firms have so far taken a cautious stance on the route, saying they needed to see whether pipeline bottlenecks worsen by the time the new link is build, which would encourage them to ship oil from West Siberia to Asia.
Halway to the pacific: As to untapped East Siberia, the only real pledge has so far come only from Russia’s No 4 oil firm Surgut, which has said it may produce up to 500,000 bpd from its Talakan field and connect it with a $1-billion link to Transneft’s pipeline. But on Friday, its president Vladimir Bogdanov said he wanted to see a maximum fee of $30 per tonne. reuters
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