CPC Strengthens Social Partnership with Astrakhan Region

​Nikolai Platonov, General Director of Caspian Pipeline Consortium, met today with Alexander Zhilkin, the regional governor, in the course of a business visit to the Astrakhan Region.
The meeting signed a memorandum of cooperation on issues around the construction of the a pontoon river crossing. A representative of another party who placed a signature under the document  is Nurgali Baytemirov, the administration head of the Krasnoyarsk District where the crossing will actually be built. According to the memorandum CPC will ensure the building of the pontoon crossing and, upon completion of construction work at an oil pump station which is is being constructed under CPC's Expansion Project in the Krasnoyarsk Region, will transfer the completed infrastructure facility to municipal district ownership. The new bridge will be a good help to the local public: today, in order to cross from one side of the river to the other, one needs have a long wait for a ferry boat whose operations are influenced by season and weather.
Nikolai Platonov, CPC General Director, informed the governor about work in progress in the region under the Expansion Project to increase the capacity of the oil pipeline system: "We are currently at the active stage of  implementation of the Expansion Project: in 2012-2014, in the Astrakhan Region, there will be two new oil pump stations built in the Krasnoyarsky and Narimanovsky Districts, and also this year an upgrade of the existing Astrakhan Pump Station will be completed in the Enotayevskiy District. A high-voltage power line will be built to provide external power to the pump stations. In total we plan to invest about 13 bn rubles into the Expansion facilities in the region".
Issues around social partnership between the company and the Astrakhan Region were discussed in detail. Nikolai Platonov reported that the Expansion Project will create several hundred jobs for local residents for the construction period, and later on there will be about 60 well-paid permanent job vacancies created to operate the new pump stations. Furthermore, the company plans to spend about 150 million rubles on community-related programs in the Astrakhan Region in the next three years to build  kindergartens and schools. Also continued will be the purchase of medical equipment for regional health institutions; in particular, this year CPC will allocate a significant sum for acquisition of medical equipment for a regional cardiologic dispensary.
Summing up the results of the meeting, the governor Alexander Zhilkin emphasized that the regional government and municipal authorities would assist the consortium in the implementation of the Expansion Project and also expressed appreciation for active involvement by Caspian Pipeline Consortium in social development of the region.
The CPC pipeline system is one of the largest investment projects with foreign capital in the CIS. The length of the pipeline connecting oil fields in Western Kazakhstan with the Marine Terminal in Novorossiysk is 1,511 km. CPC's Marine Terminal is equipped with Single Point Moorings that allow to load tankers safely at a significant distance offshore, including bad weather conditions.
The Expansion provides for the CPC pipeline system capacity increase to 67MTA. The Expansion Project includes rehabilitation of the existing, and construction of 10 additional pump stations (2 in the Republic of Kazakhstan and 8 in the Russian Federation), six crude oil storage tanks near Novorossiysk, as well as third single point mooring at the CPC Marine Terminal and replacement of 88 km of pipelines in Kazakhstan with a larger diameter pipe. The total amount of the Project investments will be US$ 5.4 billion.  Expansion is planned to be completed in 2015.