US to lay pipeline across Caspian seabed
ticle.php?storyid=29773

Telugu Portal, India

Baku, Jan 27 (RIA Novosti) A US firm has been granted the contract to
lay a 58 km oil pipeline in the Caspian Sea. The project is expected
to be fully operational in 2008, with an annual capacity of 10 billion
cubic metres of gas and 4 million tonnes of oil.

McDermott Caspian Contractors Inc., a US based design and engineering
company will lay the pipeline to the Yury Korchagin oil and gas field,
located in the Russian sector of the Caspian Sea at a cost of $700
million, according to a statement released by LUKoil, Russia’s largest
crude producer.

Since the early 2000s, the ex-Soviet republics of Kazakhstan and
Azerbaijan have been considering projects to lay natural gas or oil
pipelines across the bed of the Caspian Sea and bypassing
Russia. However, Moscow has consistently opposed the idea, citing
environmental concerns
( /article.php?storyid=29773#).

–By RIA Novosti