PRESS: Russian Railways prepares options for BAM, Transsib devt

MOSCOW, Sep 21 (PRIME) -- Russian Railways has designed preliminary options for the third stage of development and expansion of the Baikal–Amur Mainline (BAM) and the Trans–Siberian Railway (Transsib), Kommersant business daily reported on Tuesday citing sources.

The second stage of the BAM development envisages increasing the railway’s throughput capacity to around 180 million tonnes, Kommersant reported. The cost of the third stage was earlier assessed by CEO Oleg Belozyorov at 2–4 trillion rubles depending on the scale of the project.

A source said that one of the scenarios encompasses additional deliveries of 16.6 million tonnes of coal from the Elga deposit for 332.6 billion rubles.

Kommersant reported earlier that the government had not supported the idea of Elgaugol, which develops the Elga field, to build a new railway from Yakutia to the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk for transportation of the company’s 30 million tonnes of coal. It had suggested extending the BAM using Russian Railways’ own investment and money from the National Wealth Fund instead.

The daily reported that there are two other options. One of them envisages increasing the throughput capacity to 210 million tonnes by 2030 to deliver both the 16.6 million tonnes of coal from the Elga field to the Vanino ports and additional 13.4 million tonnes of cargoes to the ports of the Primorsky Region.

The variant will need construction of 1,100 kilometers of the BAM’s secondary railway in additional to the 553 kilometers of railway necessary for the Elga part of the project. Russian Railways has evaluated the option at 891 billion rubles, or to 1.22 trillion rubles together with the first option.

Another scenario is to extend the railway to cargo loading of 240 million tonnes, which will need large-scale operations at both the BAM and the Transsib, including construction of 1,450 kilometers of secondary and over 800 kilometers of tertiary railways. This option can cost 2.55 trillion rubles, or 2.89 trillion rubles together with the Elga part.

At the same time, none of the scenarios covers the second Severomuisky tunnel, which was earlier estimated by Belozyorov at 200 billion rubles.

(73.3315 – U.S. $1)

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