Russia to build world’s longest tunnel to Alaska

MOSCOW: Russia plans to build the world’s longest tunnel, a transport and pipeline link under the Bering Strait to Alaska, as part of a $65 billion project to supply the US with oil, natural gas and electricity from Siberia.

The project, which Russia is coordinating with the US and Canada, will take 10 years to 15 years to complete, TKM-World Link, which groups companies involved in the development, said in a statement handed out before a press conference with Russian officials in Moscow on Wednesday.

A 6,000-kilometre (3,700-mile) transport corridor linking the US with Siberia will feed into the tunnel, which at 64 miles will be more than twice as long as the underwater section of the Channel Tunnel between the UK and France. The tunnel will be split into three sections to link between the two islands separating Russia and the US.

“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 press 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 power and fibre-optic cables, according to TKM-World Link. Investors in the so-called public-private partnership include OAO Russian Railways, national utility OAO Unified Energy System and pipeline operator OAO Transneft.

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