Pipe - Baikal

The State Duma made amendments to the option of the Water Code already adopted in the third reading, excluding the mention of the environmental zone around Lake Baikal. This means that near the lake the legislative restrictions on construction have been removed and now the state -owned company Transneft can conduct an oil pipeline to China only 800 meters from Lake Baikal.

Earlier, the draft law in the second reading was amended by the Irkutsk deputy Sergei Kolesnikov. It was said that "the water protection zone of Lake Baikal includes river deltas flowing into the lake and passes along the tops of the ridges, the slopes of which are adjacent to the lake." In other words, it was impossible to build anything 800 meters from Lake Baikal, and this represented a significant obstacle for the Transneft project.

The law was to be approved by the Federation Council, but instead yesterday he suddenly ended up in the State Duma again. This strangeness was explained by the fact that during previous discussions, technical flaws crept into the document.

In fact, according to Polit.ru, the following occurred: on April 7, Russian President Vladimir Putin accepted the president of Rosneft Semyon Weinstock, and among other things, they obviously had a pipeline. The essence of the matter was slightly opened by the remarks of the owner of the cabinet, spoken before the journalists led the door: “... we will definitely think about how to act with the deputies in order to protect our pipeline transport much more efficiently than it was still”, “As for the protection of transport, this is a separate topic. Let's talk about this more details ...”.

As a result of yesterday's meeting, the correction of Kolesnikov was excluded, during the speeches on this issue they did not listen to the Irkutsk deputy. And when one of the deputies stated that the Duma was fulfilling the will of Transneft, he was disconnected by the microphone.

The question of the water protection zone of Baikal was at the center of discussions after the emergence of the project of the Eastern Siberia oil pipeline - the Pacific Ocean, which is built by the state company Transneft. As already reported by Polit.ru, the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and, in particular, the Irkutsk Scientific Center consistently fight against laying this oil pipeline. Scientists believe that the oil pipeline can be built, but it should pass much north of Lake Baikal, because if suddenly a pipe breaks down near Baikal, then all the spilled oil will be in the lake. However, building an oil pipeline far from Baikal for Transneft is too costly.

In January of this year, the state environmental examination issued a negative conclusion on the project, but the head of Rostekhnadzor Konstantin Pulikovsky canceled this decision. At the last meeting at the ministry, the deputy plenipotentiary in the Siberian Federal District Igor Prostyakov promised to take into account the comments of scientists. The Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences is ready to conduct an independent environmental examination of the project. With such a proposal, scientists are going to contact President Putin.

On April 1, a promotion in defense of Lake Baikal was held at the office of Transneft's office. More than 100 activists of environmental associations took part in the picket, including from Buryatia. 18 participants were detained.

Transneft plans to build an oil pipeline from the city of Taishet in Eastern Siberia to the Pacific coast. In September last year, the Ministry of Natural Resources rejected the proposal to lay the pipeline along the coast of Lake Baikal, but two months later canceled its decision.