04/26/2006
BY AKIYOSHI KOMAKI

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

MOSCOW--A plan by Russia to build part of the Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline near Lake Baikal, a World Heritage site in southern Siberia's Irkutsk province, has provoked an angry response.

Activists and local governments in Siberia fear the clear waters of the crescent-shaped lake could become the site of an environmental disaster if an earthquake or terrorist attack ruptured the pipeline.

Considered the most transparent lake on Earth, Baikal is 639 kilometers long and 80 kilometers at its widest. It covers 31,500 square kilometers, about 47 times as large as Japan's biggest lake, Biwako, in Shiga Prefecture.

At nearly 1,700 meters, Lake Baikal is also the world's deepest freshwater lake. The lake and its surroundings teem with wildlife, prompting UNESCO to declare it a World Heritage site in 1996.

The Russian government plans to construct a 4,000-kilometer pipeline linking Tayshet in eastern Siberia and the Pacific Ocean. Plans are for it to begin pumping oil by late 2008. Japan has shown interest in the project.

The chosen route brings the pipeline only 500 to 700 meters from the northern end of Lake Baikal, along a 100-kilometer stretch.

The Russian government last year asked a panel to assess the proposed pipeline's environmental impact. In March, the panel gave its approval to the project.

Environmental groups have filed lawsuits to block construction, but Russia's supreme court declared the project legal. Construction could begin as early as May.

Irkutsk Governor Alexander Tishanin is one of many who have spoken out against the project.

"The Russian government says it will stop any oil leaks within two and a half hours. But (should a pipe leak) 3,000 tons of oil could reach Lake Baikal in 20 minutes," Tishanin said.

The governor wants the pipeline route to be shifted northward, where the land is relatively flat and there is less danger of earthquakes. It would cost less to built there, too.

On the other hand, Transneft, the state-run company that is to build and operate the pipeline, says adequate safety measures are in place.

Company officials say the pipeline near Lake Baikal would be thicker than usual. Along the stretch near the lake, emergency shutoff valves will be installed every 5-6 kilometers--six times more frequently than elsewhere on the pipeline.

Environmental groups such as Baikal Ecological Wave (BEW), based in Irkutsk, do not trust the government.

"The environmental assessment experts at first turned down the project. So the government simply replaced those experts with other people, who turned around and approved the project," said Marina Rikhvanova, co-director of BEW.(IHT/Asahi: April 26,2006)

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200604260125.html

Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow
Thursday April 27, 2006
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,,1762073,00.html?gusrc=rss

Vladimir Putin backed down in the face of popular protest yesterday and ordered that an oil pipeline be diverted from Lake Baikal, the world's largest mass of fresh water.
The East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline will carry 1.6m barrels of oil a day to fast-growing markets in Asia, bolstering Russia's role as an energy power. It was originally intended to pass within half a mile of Lake Baikal but will now clear it by 25 miles. The mile-deep lake in the middle of Siberia holds a fifth of the world's fresh water and some 1,500 unique species of plants and animals.

Construction of the £6.5bn pipeline, which begins tomorrow, is expected to last for years. The original route sparked protests across Russia at the weekend, after ecologists said that seismic activity at the lake, which causes it to widen by 2cm a year, meant it was only a matter of time before the pipeline would rupture.
Mr Putin used a meeting with officials, including Semyon Vainshtok, the head of the state pipeline monopoly, Transneft, to rule out the original route. At the meeting in Tomsk, where Mr Putin is holding a summit with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, the Russian president said: "If there is even the smallest, the tiniest chance of polluting Baikal, then we must think of future generations. We must do everything to make sure this danger is not just minimised, but eliminated."

The pipeline will now run 25 miles to the north. Mr Vainshtok, who had claimed that the previous route carried virtually no risks, seemed surprised at the decision. The diversion will add an estimated £500m to the pipeline's cost.

Ecologists welcomed the decision. Igor Chestin, director of the WWF in Russia, said: "President Putin's order today says that the state is ready to listen to the opinions of citizens if they are able to organise themselves."

Lilia Shevtsova, a political analyst, said this was the second time this year that Mr Putin had intervened after popular protests, the first being when Siberian courts unexpectedly overturned the jail sentence of a driver involved in a car crash that killed a regional governor. "He is not sensitive to political demands but he is to social ones," she said. "It is populist rather than democratic."

Wed Apr 26, 1:02 PM ET

MOSCOW (AFP) - President Vladimir Putin ordered that a planned pipeline to pump Siberian oil to Asia be re-routed far from Lake Baikal, the world's largest freshwater lake, in a decision hailed by Russian environmentalists as a major victory.

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"The route will be to the north of that zone," Putin was shown on state television saying, as he stood before a map of the region and drew arrows pointing north away from Lake Baikal, signifying the route of the new pipeline.
Speaking during a meeting with local officials in the central Siberian city of Tomsk, Putin said he approved of a plan that calls for the route of the strategic pipeline to be moved to at least 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Lake Baikal.
"In this way we are significantly reducing the ecological risks before construction begins," Putin said, adding: "We can consider this agreement final."
Russia's state-owned oil pipeline concern, Transneft, had planned to build the new pipeline, a major strategic project, on a route that would run for a stretch 800 metres (yards) from the northern shores of Lake Baikal, taking advantage of an existing railway route.
But the region is notoriously prone to earthquakes and environmental activists -- joined recently by local and regional officials -- have protested that the pipeline posed a major threat to what is one of the largest and purest lakes on Earth.
Russian environmental groups were elated at Putin's decision.
"We consider this a great victory," said Andrei Petrov of the Greepeace environmental group.
"There were demonstrations in several Russian cities against this project and this proves that, for once, society expressed its demands and they were heard.
"Putin's decision is a good sign for the future environmental situation. It is the first time that such a positive environmental decision has been taken in a long time," Petrov told AFP.
The pipeline is a central element of Russian strategic 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 Russian natural gas to the region.
Last Friday, some 500 people rallied in Moscow in the latest protests against Transneft's route near Lake Baikal.
In addition to its purity -- or because of it -- Lake Baikal is home to a range of unique flora and fauna, including the world's only freshwater seal.
In an interview published Wednesday in the liberal daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta, the head of Transneft, Semyon Vainshtok, said the cost of building the pipeline would grow by around 900 million dollars if the planned pipeline were shifted from near the lake to a route further north.
Vainshtok said the project was not practical because there were high mountains and no transport infrastructure in the region further to the north of Lake Baikal.
Earlier this month, environmental activists lamented that informed public debate on the pipeline route was not possible because state-controlled media were not giving any coverage to the dispute.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060426/sc_afp/russiaoilenvironment_060426170227

Putin Reroutes Oil Line to Avoid Landmark Lake

By STEVEN LEE MYERS
Published: April 27, 2006


MOSCOW, April 26 — President Vladimir V. Putin ordered Wednesday that an oil pipeline being built across Siberia be rerouted away from the northern shore of Lake Baikal, one of the world's natural landmarks.

Mr. Putin's edict reversed a controversial government decision last month to allow Russia's pipeline monopoly, Transneft, to build the line within a half mile of Lake Baikal, the world's most voluminous body of fresh water.

The pipeline, a $11.5 billion, 2,500-mile project, will pump Russian oil to markets in Asia.

Rare public protests followed the approval in March of the initial route, with rallies from Moscow to Irkutsk, the Siberian region bordering the lake.

"It was not a huge wave," Aleksandr Shuvalov, deputy executive director of Greenpeace Russia, said of the protests, "but it was a wave."

The pipeline's route, so close to Lake Baikal, had raised concerns that any accident in a remote, seismically active region could send oil spilling into a lake holding more than 20 percent of the world's fresh water and an abundance of unique wildlife species. Not only environmental groups, but also Russian scientists opposed Transneft's planned route.

A commission of specialists from the Russian Academy of Sciences initially opposed the route on environmental grounds. Its recommendation was rejected and a new review ordered with new specialists.

Mr. Putin's decision on Wednesday was an unexpected reversal and appeared choreographed for state television networks. Meeting with federal and regional officials in Tomsk, a Siberian city, he publicly chided Transneft's director, Semyon M. Vainshtok, after asking if there was an alternative to the contested route.

"Since you hesitate, it means that there is such a possibility," Mr. Putin told a visibly uncomfortable Mr. Vainshtok. "If there had not been such a possibility, you would have said 'no' without any doubt."

Mr. Putin then ordered that the route hew more closely to one previously recommended by the Academy of Sciences but rejected by a regulatory agency. He said a new route should be charted at least 40 kilometers, or nearly 25 miles, from Lake Baikal. That would put it outside of Baikal's watershed, environmental groups said.

Mr. Shuvalov called it "a victory of common sense."

The reversal underscored Mr. Putin's highly centralized power and his penchant for dramatic gestures. Wielding a pen in front of an oversize map of the Baikal region, he swept aside decisions by several government agencies, as well as those by Transneft, which had warned that finding another route would be prohibitively expensive.

Mr. Vainshtok and other officials from Transneft could not be reached for comment. They had said that the planned route would be safe and that moving it could add nearly $1 billion to the cost of the pipeline. When Mr. Vainshtok, in the televised exchange, suggested that the pipeline would have to move "much farther north," Mr. Putin responded curtly.

"If there is at least a tiny chance of polluting Baikal," he said, "we, thinking of future generations, must do everything not only to minimize this threat, but to exclude it."

Natalya Podkovyrzina, a leader of Baikal Wave, an environmental group in Irkutsk, said it was not yet clear if the pipeline could easily be built where Mr. Putin said. "Forty kilometers to the north is a mountainous area, highlands and impassable taiga," she said. Mr. Putin decided to move the pipeline as Russia, with Ukraine and Belarus, commemorated the 20th anniversary of the nuclear accident at Chernobyl. The authorities broke up a protest against nuclear energy in Moscow, briefly detaining a dozen Greenpeace protesters who had chained themselves to a fence at St. Basil's Cathedral, in Red Square.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/27/world/europe/27pipeline.html?_r=1&oref=slogin