Russia Approves Divisive Pipeline Plan

Russia Approves Divisive Pipeline Plan

Russia Approves Divisive Pipeline Plan
Critics Cite Threat to Lake Baikal, Political Pressure on Panel

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 7, 2006; A14

MOSCOW, March 6 -- A controversial plan to build a major oil pipeline passing within half a mile of Siberia's Lake Baikal, the world's largest freshwater lake, was approved by a Russian government regulatory agency Monday.

The decision followed a review process that environmentalists and some Russian experts involved in assessing the route say was marked by manipulation of an expert panel and political pressure on dissenting scientists.

"Even if billions of dollars are at stake, the Russian government cannot put Lake Baikal at risk," Andrei Poyarkov, a member of the expert panel and a biologist at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution in the Russian Academy of Sciences, said at a news conference in Moscow. "They do not have the right."

The head of Rostekhnadzor, the Federal Service for Environmental, Technological and Nuclear Oversight, signed a decree Monday accepting the vote of an expert commission last week to give the project the green light, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.

The expert panel's vote overturned one last month by the same group to reject the route on grounds that a pipeline rupture in the earthquake-prone area could send thousands of tons of crude oil into the lake, a Russian natural treasure. UNESCO designated the lake a World Heritage Site 10 years ago.

Transneft, the state-controlled pipeline operator, is set to build the 2,500-mile pipeline, which would run from Taishet in eastern Siberia to the Pacific coast. With an annual capacity of 80 million tons of crude, it would allow Russia to increase its oil exports to China, Japan and other Asia-Pacific economies.

The $11.5 billion project is a strategic goal of President Vladimir Putin's government, which wants to diversify the country's export network and build Russia into an energy superpower.

Officials at Transneft argue that rerouting the pipeline would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the project's costs and cause major delays in starting construction. They also insist that the project will not endanger the lake.

"Transneft will take all the requisite precautions for Baikal to stay safe," said Simon Vainshtok, president of the company, in an interview last month with the government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta. "For instance, the average thickness of the pipe we use across Russia is 9 millimeters, whereas in the vicinity of Baikal it is 27 millimeters." Those measurements are equivalent to about 0.35 inches and 1.1 inches.

The project has a history of rejection, then acceptance by official bodies. Last September, the Natural Resources Ministry turned down the proposal for the route near Lake Baikal but reversed itself two months later under what Russian news reports have called pressure from the Kremlin.

In a vote last month, 46 of 52 members of an expert panel that Rostekhnadzor had appointed to study the project rejected the route.

After that vote, Rostekhnadzor added 34 experts to the group, all of whom favored the proposed route, according to Gennady Chegasov, a dissenting member of the panel. Chegasov said group members who voted to reject the pipeline came under strong pressure. People were told, "If you vote against construction, it will be the end of your scientific career," he said.

Supporters of the plan still had trouble mustering the two-thirds majority necessary to approve construction, Chegasov said. In the end, 58 members of the expanded commission voted for the project, with 27 against.

"I remember the Communist Party and the meetings of the party were not like this," said Stanislav Tronin, another member of the panel and a chemist at the Institute for Emergency Situations.

Last week, Putin was presented with a petition signed by 14,000 Russians asking him to take measures to change the route.

A spokesman for Rostekhnadzor could not be reached Monday. In the past week, the agency has declined to comment on allegations that it manipulated the process.

Roman Vazhenkov, the Baikal Campaign coordinator for Greenpeace, said opponents would appeal to the Russian courts and seek to influence international lenders not to finance the pipeline. He said his organization had already written to major banks in the United States, Europe and Japan.

Greenpeace and other opponents of the project said they recognized the need for a pipeline and objected only to the route.

Vainshtok, Transneft's president, told Rossiyskaya Gazeta that Greenpeace and other environmental groups were being manipulated by "puppet masters" outside Russia who do not want China to grow in strength by importing more Russian oil.