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First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, the most likely successor to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the upcoming March elections, demonstrated toughness at a meeting in Khabarovsk when criticizing the officials’ reports about oil and gas pipeline setbacks in the country’s depressive Far Eastern region.

Medvedev first slammed the country's ministry of industry and energy for delays in its appraisal of the final point for a Siberian oil pipeline supposed to run from Taishet to Primorye’s Bay of Kozmino.

Anatoly Yanovsky, a deputy industry and energy minister, could not give a definite answer to Medvedev who demanded an explanation for how long the appraisals should take.

"The minister has three days to tell me what has happened, why it is taking so long, and how this will affect the construction," Medvedev harshly ruled. "This project is crucial for the Far East, and all this talk about why and where, what is happening to the paperwork, is just pathetic," Medvedev indicated, according to Interfax news agency.

The $11.5 billion pipeline with a projected shipping capacity of 80 million tons of crude oil per year is slated to supply oil from Eastern Siberia to the Pacific Ocean, increasing exports to the Pacific Rim countries such as China, Japan and South Korea.

Transneft, Russia's oil transporting monopoly, will build the 4,188 kilometer pipeline in two stages. The first stretch of 2,390 kilometers will run from Taishet in Siberia to Skovorodino close to the Chinese border in the Amur region. The second portion will run to Primorye’s Bay of Kozmino, an appraisal of this section is being held up by the ministry.

Another beneficial and large-scale project for the Far Eastern residents, a gas pipeline from the island of Sakhalin to Khabarovsk, is stalled by the overly dragged-out talks between the two state behemoths - the major producer of natural gas, OAO Gazprom, and the oil company Rosneft. Gazprom’s Deputy CEO Alexander Ananenkov told the conference that a decision on building the pipeline from Sakhalin to the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur in the Khabarovsk territory to Khabarovsk had been taken on the whole.

The pipeline will have an annual capacity of 4.5 billion cubic meters of gas but the actual operating capacity will be slightly less than 2.0 billion cubic meters

“It has not been fully completed while the section between Sakhalin and Komsomolsk-on-Amur is in an extremely bad technical condition. It is an old system and it belongs to Rosneft,” Ananenkov said, as cited by Itar-Tass news agency.

When Medvedev asked Ananenkov what kind of problem hurdles everyone to move ahead faster, Ananenkov complained about the slow pace of talks with Rosneft.

“Then I will give a boost to you and to Rosneft, too,” Medvedev said. “If two large government-controlled companies can’t reach an agreement and this affects the interests of people in the Far East, consider this an official stern order,” Medvedev stressed, according to Itar-Tass.


Closing the meeting, Medvedev noted that such sessions are useful because officials start to talk to each other only after they are publicly pushed; otherwise in their Moscow offices they turn everything into tons of bureaucratic papers.

From Interfax, Itar-Tass and The Vladivostok