Chinese Pipeline (Kazakhstan)

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Chinese pipeline (Kazakhstan)

Realising a promising project is not easier, than dealing with Chinese alphabet.

The scandalous story of Russian company "Yukos" can as well echo in Kazakhstan. And it may happen quite unexpectedly. For instance, a possible result of the struggles of Russian authorities against oligarchs can be an activation of the idea of building the oil pipeline from West Kazakhstan to China.

Let's remind its prehistory. First time that the idea was expressed was in 1997, but the project still remained on paper, it appeared that on the way of its realisation there were a number of problems. In the first place, to make a pipeline economically justified, it is necessary to pump at least 20 million tons of oil per year through it (according to other information - 30 million).

There were not that much of "free" oil in the country. And an abrupt growth of the production volumes was not expected either. Secondly, there were quite a lot of problems in the project itself, the main one of them being a very big length of the pipeline. This moment seemed to be ignored by the project ideologues. The oil pipeline in fact would have a route from West Kazakhstan to East China and it means more than 5 thousand kilometres. Many believed that the construction of such a long pipeline was not realisable at least due to its huge prime cost.

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Chinese pipeline