US KHATYN, Yakutia, September 1 (RIA Novosti) - Russian President Vladimir Putin attended Gazprom’s groundbreaking ceremony for its construction of the 3,000-kilometer (1,860-mile) Power of Siberia pipeline Monday.
“Without any exaggeration, we are launching a large-scale strategic project on the global level. It is meant to stimulate the development of Eastern Siberia and the Far East and increase Russia’s energy security as a whole. The new gas pipeline will significantly strengthen economic cooperation with the governments of the Asia-Pacific region and, first and foremost, with our key partner China,” Putin said during the opening ceremony.
“We are launching the world’s biggest construction project. There will not be anything bigger in the near future,” the Russian president stressed.
Putin also thanked Chinese President Xi Jinping for his support of joint efforts.
In May, Gazprom and China’s CNPC signed a 30-year agreement on the annual export of around 38 billion cubic meters of Russian gas to China. The project is valued at $400 billion. Russia’s Power of Siberia gas transmission system is designed for delivering gas from the Irkutsk Region and Yakutia gas production centers further eastward to Russia’s Far East and China. The pipeline’s Yakutsk-Khabarovsk section is scheduled for a late 2017 launch.
