Baltic Pipeline System capacity to be increased

By the end of 2003 Transneft is planning to increase the capacity of the Baltic Pipeline System by three times, Transneft Vice President Sergey Per-Sarkisiants declared at a round table meeting today devoted to the development of the pipeline systems in Russia. According to him, the company wants to enhance the pipeline's capacity by that time to "at least 30m tons per year and later to 50m tons".

In his turn, Deputy Energy Minister Vladimir Stanev admitted that Transneft was finishing preparations for increasing the pipeline system's capacity to 30m tons.

As reported earlier, initially the company planned to enlarge the capacity from 12m to 18m tons this year. However, at the end of 2002 Transneft authorities proposed to increase it to 30m tons in order to meet the demand for oil transportation facilities due to the growth in annual oil production.

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