The study, begun early last year, should be completed within a few weeks allowing work on the proposed 4,000km pipeline to begin soon afterwards.
The pipeline would carry gas from the Kovytka gas field near Irkutsk, in Siberia, to South Korea, which has also joined Japan in eyeing off the substantial reserves in the Sakhalin-2 project.
Add to this the $US125 billion, 25 year oil deal that the Russians signed with China just over a week ago and it would appear that the former super power is not messing around with small contracts in its bid to sew up the Asian market.
The consortium backing the pipeline project includes the Kovytka gas-field licence holder RUSIA-Petroleum, and Russian oil majors BP-TNK and Interos. Its partners in the project are the Korean Gas Company and the Chinese National Petroleum Corp.
The objective is for the pipeline to be completed by 2008 or 2010 at the latest.
