MOSCOW - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Aug. 29 opened the Russian section of a long-awaited oil pipeline that will carry Russian crude to China in a bid by Russia to diversify its oil exports away from Europe.
"The Russian part of the project is completed," Putin said at an opening ceremony in Skovorodino in the Far Eastern Amur region in comments published on his official web site.
The branch pipeline will ultimately transport crude oil from Siberia to refineries in the northeastern Chinese city of Daqing.
"For us this is an important project because we are beginning to diversify the supply of our energy resources," Putin said at the ceremony, attended by the head of China's National Energy Administration, Zhang Guobao.
"Up to now, the main supplies have been delivered to our European partners. And still today our European partners get around 120-130 million tons of Russian oil."
The pipeline will initially carry 30 million tons of oil a year to the energy-hungry Asia-Pacific region and will later build up to 50 million tons, Putin said.
No comments:
Post a Comment