MOSCOW, June 15 (RIA Novosti) - The Federal Inspection for the Use of Natural Resources, or Rosprirodnadzor, is ready to pass to the Prosecutor General's office, within the week, a file on illegal lumbering along a petroleum mainline, now in blueprints, that will link East Siberia with the Russian Pacific coast. Oleg Mitvol, Rosprirodnadzor deputy chief, said so to a news conference today.
"Our checks came on unauthorized lumbering by Piers Co. along the mainline route." The company had not obtained government environmental experts' approval for lumbering in the area, and for geological prospecting of the mainline site, he added.
The line is being laid too close to Lake Baikal. As blueprints have it, it will be a mere 1.5 to two kilometers off the unique lake of global ecological significance, Mitvol warned.
A reporter asked him whether the Transneft petroleum major was to be held responsible for the trespass.
"It is up to investigators to see to what an extent the Piers and Transneft companies can be held liable," was the reply.
As Semyon Weinstock, Transneft boss, said on a previous occasion, a stage-by-stage mainline laying schedule was to reach the federal government before May 1. Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov signed a decree on East Siberia-Pacific mainline laying late last year. The route is to start in Taishet and go as far as Perevoznaya Bay via Skovorodino. With a ceiling throughput of 80 million tons a year, the line will facilitate Russian petroleum exports to countries of the Asian-Pacific region. Construction costs are estimated at $11.5 billion.
