An oil pipeline that Russia is building from Siberia to the Pacific Ocean will follow a route 400 kilometres (250 miles) away from Lake Baikal in order to allay environmental concerns, the head of Russia’s pipeline monopoly said Friday.
“The pipeline will be significantly diverted away from Baikal…. At its closest point it will lie at a distance of 400 kilometres,” Transneft’s chief executive Semyon Vainshtok said at a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, quoted by ITAR-TASS.
Putin earlier ordered a revision of plans that would have seen the strategic pipeline built just a few hundred metres from Baikal, the world’s largest fresh water lake.
The region is notoriously prone to earthquakes and environmental activists — joined by local and regional officials — have protested that the pipeline posed a major threat to the lake.
As a result of the new route, the first stage of the pipeline, from Taishet in the Irkutsk province to Skovorodino in Amur province, will be an extra 400 kilometres in length, Vainshtok said.
The pipeline is a central element of Russian plans to supply energy-hungry markets in the Asia-Pacific region with oil from huge fields in Siberia, plans that also envisage construction of new pipelines for shipping natural gas.
Baikal is home to a range of unique flora and fauna, including the world’s only freshwater seal.
