Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday opened a new oil export terminal that will serve as a key gateway for Russian energy exports to Asian markets. Putin clicked on a computer mouse to fill a Russian tanker bound for Hong Kong at the terminal in the far eastern port of Kozmino. «It is an important event for Russia,» Putin said in televised remarks at the opening ceremony. «It is a strategic project, which enables us to enter the growing markets of the Asia-Pacific region.» Russia has sought to diversify its energy exports, which until now have been mostly bound for Europe, according to the Associated Press. Putin praised workers for the «grandiose» job. He said it cost 60 billion rubles (about $2 billion) to build the Kozmino terminal. Kozmino is the destination point of a new pipeline that will pump crude from huge oilfields in eastern Siberia. The pipeline"s first 2,750-kilometer (1,700-mile) section linking Taishet in eastern Siberia with Skovorodino near the border with China was completed last month, but exports to the energy-hungry economic giant are expected to start only in 2011 after the two neighbors" pipeline systems are linked. It cost 360 billion rubles (about $12 billion) to build the Taishet-Skovorodino pipeline, which was completed quickly thanks to a deal with China in February that provided $25 billion in loans to Russian state energy companies in exchange for oil supplies for the next 20 years. The second leg stretching from Skovorodino to Kozmino, another 2,100 kilometers (1,300 miles) east, is still being built, and until its completion in 2012 the oil will be carried there by rail. «The pipeline"s launch will strengthen Russia"s energy security,» said Nikolai Tokarev, the president of Russia"s state-controlled Transneft oil company, which operates the pipeline.
