Russia Loads First Oil Tanker at Pacific Seaport

Russia Loads First Oil Tanker at Pacific Seaport  

 Russia started loading the first oil tanker at Kozmino port, the terminus of the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean Pipeline that will help the country gain access to Asian markets including Japan, China and South Korea.

 “This completes one of the biggest projects in Russia,” Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said at an inauguration ceremony today. “This is a strategic project, because it allows entry in new markets, fast-growing Asia-Pacific markets.

” The $26 billion pipeline project will give producers including state-run OAO Rosneft the option to sell oil to eastern or western customers while helping to drive development in relatively unexplored East Siberia.

 The link may result in less crude oil being exported to Europe, where the International Energy Agency has forecast long-term demand will be stagnant, according to OAO Transneft, Russia’s oil pipeline operator. The tanker, carrying crude from Rosneft, is bound for Hong Kong, Transneft Chief Executive Officer Nikolai Tokarev told reporters.

 When completed, the project will include a 1.6 million barrel-a-day pipeline spanning 4,794 kilometers (2,979 miles), a distance longer than that between New York and Los Angeles, as well as the port of Kozmino and a spur pipe supplying China.

 China will receive 15 million metric tons of oil a year and Kozmino will export twice that amount when the link, known as the ESPO, reaches full capacity, Tokarev said in an interview posted on the company’s Web site.   

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