"We plan to build the pipeline to the Pacific coast with eventual supplies to the Asia-Pacifc region including Japan," Putin said in a speech at a Russia-Japan investors forum in Tokyo.
Russia is building a 4,130-km (2,566 miles), $11.5 billion pipeline across Siberia that will pump 80 million tonnes of oil a year (1.6 million barrels per day) to the Pacific.
State pipeline monopoly Transneft is building it in two stages. It expects to finish the first stage at Skovorodino, far from the coast but close to China, in 2008.
Japan has been keen to win a promise that Russia would carry on construction to a port in the Pacific, while China wants the pipeline to head south into its industrial north. No date has been set for the second stage.
I think Russia decided it would be better for their national security to ship oil to Japan rather than south to China. A pipeline south might have been a temptation to China to march north to secure the oil supply.
By contrast, getting Japan and hopefully their ally America interested in defending oil supplies from Russia might help Moscow keep China at bay as China's power in the Far East grows relative to Russia's.
I think this is a good sign that despite noise about an alliance between China and Russia, that there is no real possibility that these two countries really have shared strategic interests.
