World's Longest Pipeline Tunnel
Russia plans to build the
world's longest tunnel, a transport and
pipeline link under the Bering Strait to
Alaska, as part of a $65 billion project to
supply the U.S. with oil, natural gas and
electricity from Siberia. The project, which
Russia is coordinating with the U.S. and
Canada, would take 10 to 15 years to
complete, Viktor Razbegin, deputy head of
industrial research at the Russian Economy
Ministry, told reporters in Moscow today.
State organizations and private companies in
partnership would build and control the
route, known as TKM-World Link, he said.
A 6,000-kilometer (3,700-mile) transport
corridor from Siberia into the U.S. will
feed into the tunnel, which at 64 miles will
be more than twice as long as the underwater
section of the Channel Tunnel between the
U.K. and France, according to the plan. The
tunnel would run in three sections to link
the two islands in the Bering Strait between
Russia and the U.S. ...
The Bering Strait tunnel will cost $10
billion to $12 billion, and the rest of the
investment will be spent on the entire
transport corridor, the plan estimates.
``The project is a monster,'' Yevgeny
Nadorshin, chief economist with Trust
Investment Bank in Moscow, said in an
interview. ``The Chinese are crying out for
our commodities and willing to finance the
transport links, and we're sending oil to
Alaska.''
In Alaska, a supporter of the project is
former Governor Walter Joseph Hickel, who
plans to co-chair a conference on the
subject in Moscow next week. ``Governor
Hickel has long supported this concept, and
he talks about it and writes about it,''
said Malcolm Roberts, a senior fellow at the
Anchorage-based Institute of the North, a
research policy group focused on Arctic
issues. Hickel governed Alaska from 1966 to
1969 as a Republican and then from 1990 to
1994 as a member of the Independence Party.
Alaska's current officials, however, are
preoccupied with other issues, including a
plan to develop a pipeline to transport
natural gas from the North Slope to the
lower 48 U.S. states, Roberts said. ...
Tsar Nicholas II, Russia's last emperor, was
the first Russian leader to approve a plan
for a tunnel under the Bering Strait, in
1905, 38 years after his grandfather sold
Alaska to America for $7.2 million. World
War I ended the project.
The planned undersea tunnel would contain a
high-speed railway, highway and pipelines,
as well as power and fiber-optic cables,
according to TKM-World Link. Investors in
the so-called public-private partnership
include OAO Russian Railways, national
utility OAO Unified Energy System and
pipeline operator OAO Transneft, according
to a press release which was handed out at
the media briefing and bore the companies'
logos. ...
The World Link will save North America and
Far East Russia $20 billion a year on
electricity costs, said Vasily Zubakin,
deputy chief executive officer of OAO Hydro
OGK, Unified Energy's hydropower unit and a
potential investor. ...
``It's cheaper to transport electricity
east, and with our unique tidal resources,
the potential is real,'' Zubakin said. Hydro
OGK plans by 2020 to build the Tugurskaya
and Pendzhinskaya tidal plants, each with
capacity of as much as 10 gigawatts, in the
Okhotsk Sea, close to Sakhalin Island. The
project envisions building high-voltage
power lines with a capacity of up to 15
gigawatts to supply the new rail links and
also export to North America.
Russian Railways is working on the rail
route from Pravaya Lena, south of Yakutsk in
the Sakha republic, to Uelen on the Bering
Strait, a 3,500 kilometer stretch. The link
could carry commodities from eastern Siberia
and Sakha to North American export markets,
said Artur Alexeyev, Sakha's vice president.
The two regions hold most of Russia's metal
and mineral reserves ``and yet only 1.5
percent of it is developed due to lack of
infrastructure and tough conditions,''
Alexeyev said. ...
Rail links in Russia and the U.S., where an
almost 2,000- kilometer stretch from Angora
to Fort Nelson in Canada would continue the
route, would cost up to $15 billion,
Razbegin said. With cargo traffic of as much
as 100 million tons annually expected on the
World Link, the investments in the rail
section could be repaid in 20 years, he
said. ``The transit link is that string on
which all our industrial cluster projects
could hang,'' Zubakin said.
Japan, China and Korea have expressed
interest in the project, with Japanese
companies offering to burrow the tunnel
under the Bering Strait for $60 million a
kilometer, half the price set down in the
project, Razbegin said. ``This will
certainly help to develop Siberia and the
Far East, but better port infrastructure
would do that too and not cost $65
billion,'' Trust's Nadorshin said. ``For all
we know, the U.S. doesn't want to make
Alaska a transport hub.''
Courtesy:
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