Re: Russia Plans World's Longest Tunnel, a Link to Alaska
- From: Rothman <dnrothx@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 19 Apr 2007 16:02:07 -0700
On Apr 18, 9:04 pm, "Scott M. Kozel" <koze...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Russia Plans World's Longest Tunnel, a Link to Alaska"
By Yuriy Humber and Bradley Cook
April 18, 2007
April 18 (Bloomberg) -- Russia plans to build the world's longest
tunnel, a transport and pipeline link under the Bering Strait to Alaska,
as part of a $65 billion project to supply the U.S. with oil, natural
gas and electricity from Siberia.
The project, which Russia is coordinating with the U.S. and Canada,
would take 10 to 15 years to complete, Viktor Razbegin, deputy head of
industrial research at the Russian Economy Ministry, told reporters in
Moscow today. State organizations and private companies in partnership
would build and control the route, known as TKM-World Link, he said.
A 6,000-kilometer (3,700-mile) transport corridor from Siberia into the
U.S. will feed into the tunnel, which at 64 miles will be more than
twice as long as the underwater section of the Channel Tunnel between
the U.K. and France, according to the plan. The tunnel would run in
three sections to link the two islands in the Bering Strait between
Russia and the U.S.
"This will be a business project, not a political one," Maxim Bystrov,
deputy head of Russia's agency for special economic zones, said at the
media briefing. Russian officials will formally present the plan to the
U.S. and Canadian governments next week, Razbegin said.
The Bering Strait tunnel will cost $10 billion to $12 billion, and the
rest of the investment will be spent on the entire transport corridor,
the plan estimates.
"The project is a monster," Yevgeny Nadorshin, chief economist with
Trust Investment Bank in Moscow, said in an interview. "The Chinese are
crying out for our commodities and willing to finance the transport
links, and we're sending oil to Alaska."
In Alaska, a supporter of the project is former Governor Walter Joseph
Hickel, who plans to co-chair a conference on the subject in Moscow next
week.
"Governor Hickel has long supported this concept, and he talks about it
and writes about it," said Malcolm Roberts, a senior fellow at the
Anchorage-based Institute of the North, a research policy group focused
on Arctic issues. Hickel governed Alaska from 1966 to 1969 as a
Republican and then from 1990 to 1994 as a member of the Independence
Party.
Alaska's current officials, however, are preoccupied with other issues,
including a plan to develop a pipeline to transport natural gas from the
North Slope to the lower 48 U.S. states, Roberts said.
The U.S. government's Federal Railroad Administration isn't directly
involved in talks about the link, agency spokesman Warren Flatau said
today.
Tsar Nicholas II, Russia's last emperor, was the first Russian leader to
approve a plan for a tunnel under the Bering Strait, in 1905, 38 years
after his grandfather sold Alaska to America for $7.2 million. World
War I ended the project.
The planned undersea tunnel would contain a high-speed railway, highway
and pipelines, as well as power and fiber-optic cables, according to
TKM-World Link. Investors in the so-called public-private partnership
include OAO Russian Railways, national utility OAO Unified Energy System
and pipeline operator OAO Transneft, according to a press release which
was handed out at the media briefing and bore the companies' logos.
Russia and the U.S. may each eventually take 25 percent stakes, with
private investors and international finance agencies as other
shareholders, Razbegin said. "The governments will act as guarantors
for private money," he said.
The World Link will save North America and Far East Russia $20 billion a
year on electricity costs, said Vasily Zubakin, deputy chief executive
officer of OAO Hydro OGK, Unified Energy's hydropower unit and a
potential investor.
"It's cheaper to transport electricity east, and with our unique tidal
resources, the potential is real," Zubakin said. Hydro OGK plans by 2020
to build the Tugurskaya and Pendzhinskaya tidal plants, each with
capacity of as much as 10 gigawatts, in the Okhotsk Sea, close to
Sakhalin Island.
The project envisions building high-voltage power lines with a capacity
of up to 15 gigawatts to supply the new rail links and also export to
North America.
Russian Railways is working on the rail route from Pravaya Lena, south
of Yakutsk in the Sakha republic, to Uelen on the Bering Strait, a 3,500
kilometer stretch. The link could carry commodities from eastern
Siberia and Sakha to North American export markets, said Artur Alexeyev,
Sakha's vice president.
The two regions hold most of Russia's metal and mineral reserves "and
yet only 1.5 percent of it is developed due to lack of infrastructure
and tough conditions," Alexeyev said.
Rail links in Russia and the U.S., where an almost 2,000- kilometer
stretch from Angora to Fort Nelson in Canada would continue the route,
would cost up to $15 billion, Razbegin said. With cargo traffic of as
much as 100 million tons annually expected on the World Link, the
investments in the rail section could be repaid in 20 years, he said.
"The transit link is that string on which all our industrial cluster
projects could hang," Zubakin said.
Japan, China and Korea have expressed interest in the project, with
Japanese companies offering to burrow the tunnel under the Bering Strait
for $60 million a kilometer, half the price set down in the project,
Razbegin said.
"This will certainly help to develop Siberia and the Far East, but
better port infrastructure would do that too and not cost $65 billion,"
Trust's Nadorshin said. "For all we know, the U.S. doesn't want to make
Alaska a transport hub."
The figures for the project come from a preliminary feasibility study.
A full study could be funded from Russia's investment fund, set aside
for large infrastructure projects, Bystrov said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20670001&refer=home&sid=a0bsMi...
--
Scott M. Kozel Highway and Transportation History Websites
Virginia/Maryland/Washington, D.C.http://www.roadstothefuture.com
Capital Beltway Projects http://www.capital-beltway.com
Philadelphia and Delaware Valley http://www.pennways.com
So much for containment.
.
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