By RIA Novosti
Astana (Kazakhstan) : Russia will start supplying up to five million tonnes (36.7 million barrels) of oil a year to China via Kazakhstan from 2008, the industry and energy minister said Monday.
“Following bilateral talks, the parties signed a protocol on Kazakhstan and Russia’s oil transit in 2008. Under the protocol, Russia will for the first time start supplying five million tonnes of oil per year to China via Kazakhstan,” Viktor Khristenko said.
Khristenko, who attended a session of the inter-governmental commission for Russian-Kazakh cooperation in the Central Asian country’s capital Astana, said energy was a key element of bilateral relations, and that large-scale projects have been made possible by the strong interaction between the states.
In particular, the parties are concluding preparations for an inter-governmental agreement on a Caspian natural gas pipeline.
The pipeline from Turkmenistan, to run along Kazakhstan’s Caspian coastline to Russia, is designed to pump 10-20 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe via Russia’s pipeline network, and is a rival project to a Western-backed trans-Caspian pipeline bypassing Russia.