OREANDA-NEWS. CPC General Director Nikolai Brunich made a business tour of the CPC Central and Western Regions on November 20-22.

The tour included visits to the Astrakhan, Komsomolsk and Kropotkin pump stations which are being upgraded in Expansion Phase 1, and also the new pump stations under construction in the Astrakhan Region, the Republic of Kalmykia and the Stavropol Krai - APS-4A, PS-2, PS-4, PS-5 and PS-7. Business meeting were held with attendance by PMC and contractor management. The CPC General Director commented that in general the work was going well and on schedules, while some sites had to accelerate the construction and commissioning progress on new equipment.

While in Stavropol, the CPC chief executive met with some Stavropol Krai leaders, including Ivan Kovalev, First Deputy Government Chairman, and the Deputy Government Chairmen Roman Petrashov and Andrei Murga, The meeting discussed matters related to CPC's activities in the region and also mutual cooperation in the area of community policy. The regional government representatives stressed the high significance of CPC's investments into the economic development of the region and reaffirmed their continuing support in dealing with any administrative or legal issues faced by CPC in the course of its activities in the region.

The CPC pipeline system is one of the largest investment projects in the energy sector with foreign capital in the CIS. The length of the pipeline connecting oil fields in Western Kazakhstan with the Marine Terminal in Novorossiysk is 1,511 km. The CPC Marine Terminal is equipped with single point moorings allowing to load tankers safely far offshore, including in bad weather conditions.

The Expansion Project provides for an upgrade of 5 existing and the construction of 10 additional pump stations (2 in the Republic of Kazakhstan and 8 in the Russian Federation), six 100 cum crude oil storage tanks 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 investment into the Project will amount to USD 5.4 billion