OREANDA-NEWS. September 10, 2012. Rosneft and Transneft have signed an agreement to jointly construct an offshoot of the Eastern Siberia – Pacific Ocean (ESPO) trunk pipeline linking to Rosneft’s Komsomolsk refinery. Signing of the agreement coincided with the APEC summit, reported the press-centre of Rosneft.

The pipeline offshoot is designed to transport crude to the refinery in Komsomolsk-on-Amur. The pipeline will have an annual capacity of up to 8 million tonnes and construction is expected to take 4 years. Crude oil is currently delivered to the refinery by rail. Transneft will finance the design and construction of the offshoot from the long-term agreed fee paid by Rosneft in line with a separate agreement. Rosneft will also supply up to 8 million tonnes of crude a year into Transneft’s trunk pipelines for supply to the Komsomolsk refinery.

The offshoot will be built as part of Transneft’s long-term trunk pipeline system development policy under the Russian Federation’s general oil industry development plan and also as part of Rosneft’s large-scale refinery modernisation drive, which aims to boost output of high quality products.

Notes for editors:
Rosneft is implementing a large-scale modernisation programme at the Komsomolsk refinery with the ultimate objective of increasing refinery yield, improving environmental and industrial safety performance and fully switching to producing fuels that comply with Euro 5 environmental standards. Modernisation will bring the refinery’s capacity up to 8 million tons of crude per year.

Transneft is building the second stage of the ESPO pipeline, which transports oil from fields in Eastern Siberia to consumers on the Pacific coast and for export to China.