Agreement on Integrating Druzhba and Adria Pipelines to be Signed Before 2003

A governmental agreement among participant states of the Druzhba-Adria project will be signed before 2003, Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Andrey Denisov reported at the Russian Oil and Gas Week. He pointed out that they had recently finished coordinating its parameters and the governmental agreement among the states participating in this project.

It is worth mentioning that this governmental agreement was very difficult to coordinate. Due to technical problems, the parties could not sign the agreement for over half a year. The project of integrating the Druzhba and Adria pipelines initiated by the Transneft oil transportation company, suggests creating an export route for transporting Russian oil and possibly oil of CIS countries to world markets, including the North American market. Oil is to be transported through Omishal, a deep-water Croatian port, via stage-by-stage loading and increasing the existing pipeline capacities by 5, 10 and 15 million tons per year. The total itinerary is over 3,000 kilometers long. It goes through Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Croatia, Hungary and Slovakia. The cost of the first stage of the project is estimated at $20-25m.