OREANDA-NEWS. Within the framework of his business trip made from July 2 through July 4, Nikolay Brunich, General Director of Caspian Pipeline Consortium, visited the Central and Western Regions traversed by Tengiz-Novorossiysk Trunk Pipeline, and also the Marine Terminal.

In the course of this trip, he inspected the Consortium's Pump Stations (Kropotkin PS, Komsomolskaya PS and Astrakhan PS) which are in the process of being ungraded under Phase 1 of the CPC Pipeline Expansion Project, and also the Marine Terminal Tank Farm where work is underway to construct six 100,000 cu. m storage tanks in addition to the four existing ones. Working meetings were held with management of the locations and with representatives of the contractors involved in the construction process. CPC General Director noted a considerable progress in the construction work, which had been achieved during the two months that elapsed since his previous inspection trip, despite a certain backlog in the work schedule of Expansion Project Phase 1. Some existing problems were identified, which affected the timely work performance, and the ways of their prompt resolution were worked out.

A meeting was held in Novorossiysk City Administration Offices between Nikolay Brunich and Vladimir Sinyagovsky, Head of this Hero City, where they discussed the matters of implementing the joint social projects, in particular, construction of a kindergarten for 160 children in Glebovskoe and a purchase by the company of nine buses for arrangement of new city passenger lines. V. Sinyagovsky appreciated the consortium's support and timely fulfillment of all agreements, and also expressed his hope that further cooperation would be fruitful as well.

CPC pipeline system is one of the largest investment projects in the energy industry with participation of foreign capital on the CIS territory. The length of the pipeline connecting the oil fields in Western Kazakhstan with the Marine Terminal near Novorossiysk is 1,511 km. CPC Marine Terminal is equipped with single point moorings which allow for safe tanker lifting at a considerable distance from the shore, also when the weather conditions are unfavorable.

The Expansion Project includes rehabilitation of 5 existing and construction of 10 additional pump stations (2 in the Republic of Kazakhstan and 8 in the Russian Federation), six new storage tanks (100,000 cu.m each) in addition to the existing four near Novorossiysk and a third SPM at the CPC Marine Terminal, and also the replacement of an 88 km pipeline section in Kazakhstan with a larger diameter pipe. The total amount of the Project investments will be USD 5.4 billion.