Today, September 9, 2011, employees of Transneft completed welding of the final joint of the 2nd phase of the 5,000km-long pipeline Eastern Siberia - Pacific Ocean (ESPO-2), the largest in the world, Transneft said Friday.
The company boasts that the entire pipeline has been completed in less than 20 months. Transneft commenced construction of ESPO-2 on January 14, 2010. It was just two weeks after the commissioning of the ESPO-1, and the first Russian crude oil shipment from the port Kozmino. In December 2010, Transneft workers welded the thousandth km of the ESPO-2 pipeline.
Projected annual capacity of the ESPO-2 is 30 million tons, with further throughput increase to 50 million tons. The pipeline commissioning is scheduled for the end of 2012.
Moscow-based Transneft is the state-owned Russian company responsible for the national oil pipelines. Transneft owns the largest oil pipeline system in the world, with a total network length of nearly 50,000 km. The company transports about 93% of the oil extracted in Russia.