Russia's Transneft second quarter net more than doubles

MOSCOW - Russian oil pipeline monopoly Transneft saw net profit more than double to 45.1 billion roubles ($1.4 billion) year on year in the second quarter of 2011, thanks to crude sales to China.

Second-quarter revenue at the company, whose sole source of revenue is oil transportation fees, increased to 147.3 billion roubles from 105.4 billion in the same period of 2010.

Transneft increased its fees by 2.8 percent from Sept. 1 and is expected to boost them by a further five percent from November.

State-controlled Transneft, which owns and operates most of the oil and refined product pipelines in Russia in January, started shipping 300,000 b/d of oil to China along the first stage of a pipeline from oil fields in Siberia.

Putin opens Russian side of oil pipeline to China

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.