Russia plans to build the world's longest pipeline-tunnel complex, a transport and pipeline link under the Bering Strait to Alaska, as part of a $65 billion project to supply the United States with oil, natural gas and electricity from Siberia.

The project, which Russia is coordinating with the United States and Canada, will take 10 years to 15 years to complete, companies involved in the development, said in a statement handed out before a news conference with Russian officials in Moscow.

A 3,700-mile (6,000-km), road, rail and pipeline corridor linking the United States with Siberia will feed into the tunnel portion, which at 64 miles will be more than twice as long as the underwater section of the Channel Tunnel between Britain and France. The tunnel will be split into three sections to link up between two islands in the Bering Strait.

The distance from Naukan, on the eastern tip of Siberia, to Big Diomede Island in Russian water, is 24 miles. It's another 3 miles across the border to Little Diomede Island on the US side and another 25 miles to Wales, Alaska.

The 3,700-mile (6,000 km) is very close to the straight-line distance between oil and gas fields near Irkutsk in Russia to Anchorage, Alaska.

"This will be a business project, not a political one," Maxim Bystov, deputy head of Russia's agency for special economic zones, said at the news conference.

The Bering Strait tunnel will cost $10 billion to $12 billion, and the rest of the investment will be spent on the entire transport corridor.

The tunnel will contain a high-speed railway, highway and pipelines, as well as fiber-optic and power cables, according to TKM-World Link.

Investors in the so-called public-private partnership include Russian Railways, the national utility Unified Energy System and the pipeline operator Transneft.

Viktor Razbegin, deputy head of industrial research at the Russian Economy Ministry, said the Russian and American governments may eventually take 25 percent stakes in the project.

Source: Bloomberg and E&P magazine

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