Russia plans pipeline for oil for Japan

MOSCOW, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Russia plans to build a pipeline that would allow 1.6 million barrels of oil a day to be shipped to the Pacific for export to Japan and other countries.

The $10 billion project means that another proposed pipeline to China has been scrapped, the BBC reports. But agreements remain in place that require Russia to ship 300,000 barrels of oil to China each day by 2007 and double that by the end of the next decade.

The state-owned pipeline monopoly, Transneft, is to develop a schedule for construction by May 2005. The pipeline is to connect Taishet in East Siberia with Pervoznaya in the Primorsk region, about 2,500 miles away.