Russia to Build Underwater Tunnel to Alaska

COMMENT: No, it's not April 1 and apparently this is, if not real, at least not an intentional joke. And some think SeaBreeze is ambitious!

Russia to Build Underwater Tunnel to Alaska
MOSNEWS.com, 19-Apr-2007

Russia-Alaska link: A Bering Strait tunnel
Sabra Ayres, Anchorage Daily News, 21-Apr-2007

Tunnel dream: Undersea project would link Alaska, Russia
CNN.com, 25-Apr-2007

Official from the Russian Economy Ministry told reporters on Wednesday, April 18, that 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 U.S. with oil, natural gas and electricity from Siberia.

The project, which Russia is coordinating with the U.S. and Canada, would take 10 to 15 years to complete, Viktor Razbegin, deputy head of industrial research at the Russian Economy Ministry, said. State organizations and private companies in partnership would build and control the route, known as TKM-World Link, he added.

A 6,000-kilometer (3,700-mile) transport corridor from Siberia into the U.S. 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 U.K. and France, according to the plan. The tunnel would run in three sections to link the two islands in the Bering Strait between Russia and the U.S.

“This will be a business project, not a political one,” Maxim Bystrov, deputy head of Russia’s agency for special economic zones, was quoted by Bloomberg as telling a media briefing. Russian officials will formally present the plan to the U.S. and Canadian governments next week, Razbegin said.
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 plan estimates.

“The project is a monster,” Yevgeny Nadorshin, chief economist with Trust Investment Bank in Moscow, said in an interview with Bloomberg. “The Chinese are crying out for our commodities and willing to finance the transport links, and we’re sending oil to Alaska.”

The planned undersea tunnel would contain a high-speed railway, highway and pipelines, as well as power and fiber-optic cables, according to TKM-World Link. Investors in the so-called public-private partnership include Russian Railways, national power utility Unified Energy System and state-controlled pipeline operator Transneft. This information was contained in the press release which was handed out at the media briefing and bore the companies’ logos.

Russia and the U.S. may each eventually take 25 percent stakes, with private investors and international finance agencies as other shareholders, Razbegin said. “The governments will act as guarantors for private money,” he said.

The World Link will save North America and Far East Russia $20 billion a year on electricity costs, said Vasily Zubakin, deputy chief executive officer of HydroOGK, Unified Energy’s hydropower unit and a potential investor.

“It’s cheaper to transport electricity east, and with our unique tidal resources, the potential is real,” Zubakin said. By 2020 HydroOGK plans to build the Tugurskaya and Pendzhinskaya tidal plants, each with capacity of as much as 10 gigawatts, in the Okhotsk Sea, close to Sakhalin Island.

The project envisions building high-voltage power lines with a capacity of up to 15 gigawatts to supply the new rail links and also export to North America.
Russian Railways is working on the rail route from Pravaya Lena, south of Yakutsk in the Sakha republic, to Uelen on the Bering Strait, a 3,500 kilometer stretch.

The link could carry commodities from Eastern Siberia and Sakha to North American export markets, said Artur Alexeyev, Sakha’s vice president.

The two regions hold most of Russia’s metal and mineral reserves “and yet only 1.5 percent of it is developed due to lack of infrastructure and tough conditions”, Alexeyev said.

Japan, China and Korea have expressed interest in the project, with Japanese companies offering to burrow the tunnel under the Bering Strait for $60 million a kilometer, half the price set down in the project, Razbegin said.

“This will certainly help to develop Siberia and the Far East, but better port infrastructure would do that too and not cost $65 billion,” Trust’s Nadorshin said. “For all we know, the U.S. doesn’t want to make Alaska a transport hub.”

The figures for the project come from a preliminary feasibility study. A full study could be funded from Russia’s investment fund, set aside for large infrastructure projects, Bystrov said.

http://mosnews.com/money/2007/04/19/alaskatunnel.shtml

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JUNEAU -- A proposal for another big construction project is gathering headlines across the world.

No, we're not talking about a $30 billion pipeline to send natural gas to the Lower 48.

This is bigger:

A $10 billion to $12 billion tunnel under the Bering Strait linking Alaska and Russia. And another $50 billion to lay railways to make the tunnel usable.

The proponents of the 64-mile tunnel are not working off an original idea.

Over the past 150 years, at least one Russian czar and several American entrepreneurs have devised plans for linking the continents.

The latest Russian concept is a tunnel tying Russia's Chukotka to Alaska's Cape Prince of Wales as part of a hoped-for continuous railway from London to New York. More than 6,000 miles of new rail lines -- about half laid in Siberia and the remainder in Alaska and Canada -- would connect the railheads on both sides. Siberian oil, gas, hydroelectric power and fiber optic cable could be exported through pipes built beside the high-speed rail service, they said.

But something is different about this current proposal, backers of the plan say, and it's not just modern technology.

Some say it's the tolerant nod of approval the Russian government has given to hosting a conference next week on the tunnel project.

Others say it's the momentum the idea has gained from media attention this week.

Maybe it's just timing: Russia's economy is booming, thanks to high world oil prices that have poured billions into the Russia treasury after 15 years of a difficult, post-Soviet transition.

In Alaska, a new governor promising to get the state a profitable natural gas pipeline has spurred some to think about fresh starts.

But it could just be kindred spirits finding common ground on dreaming big. Russia, the largest country in the world, once tried to reverse river flows to better irrigate crops.

Alaskans have seen their fair share of mega projects, too, including the trans-Alaska oil pipeline.

Former Gov. Wally Hickel has long been a champion of big, transforming projects.

Hickel is one of the Bering Strait tunnel project's most serious supporters. He said he plans to attend the conference next week in Moscow to watch a plan he has been behind for some 25 years finally find the support it deserves.

"You know how to build a gas line? Just build it," Hickel said. "Big projects are what civilizations need. Just to let the world know you can do it."

The tunnel idea resurfaced last week when a long-time advocate of the project, Viktor Razbegin, a deputy at the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, announced the Moscow conference and invited several American and Canadian enthusiasts.

Razbegin, Hickel and members of the aptly named Interhemispheric Bering Strait Tunnel & Railroad Group have been coordinating on the project since the late 1990s.

Enthusiasm aside, the current idea, like those in the past, is meeting skepticism.

Experts have said construction in the icy Bering Strait is possible, but finding funding will be difficult.

The Russians will need to complete a huge amount of rail lines to reach the remote Chukotka region, currently only accessible by plane or boat.

"I don't mean to diminish this, but a connection to Russia through Alaska any time soon is probably no more valid than the idea that we are going to send a manned mission to Mars," said Bruce Carr, the Alaska Railroad's strategic planning director.

The state-owned Alaska Railroad has been studying the possibility of connecting to Canada's rails for more than 60 years, Carr added.

The U.S. government has shown little interest in the project.

"It would be safe to say that no one here has ever heard of this thing," said Janelle Hironimus, a spokeswoman for the State Department.

Several of Russia's deputy ministers are scheduled to attend the conference, but Kremlin officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have been reluctant to throw their full weight behind it.

Still, the Russian side of the project has put on a remarkable un-Russian PR campaign ahead of the conference, said Joe Henri, an Anchorage developer and a member of the Interhemispheric Bering Strait Tunnel group

Russian organizers said the tunnel would help develop the remote Far East, where there are untapped stores of natural resources.

The state-owned electricity, railway and energy pipeline companies are listed as conference sponsors.

By late this week, stories from London to Ottawa popped up in the media and on the Internet.

Bloggers began having a field day. "Bering Strait Tunnel Project: OMG! Ultimate Road Trip!" one headlined.

Henri said the interest is a big change for a plan that has been called crazy.

But will attention and the Moscow conference move the project along?

"Biggest thing now is to form a corporation, get some Russian money, sell some stock and raise money for a feasibility study," he said.

Daily News reporter Sabra Ayres can be reached at sayres@adn.com or 1-907-586-1531.

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Story Highlights
• $65 billion project would go under Bering Strait
• Proposed tunnel would be 68 miles long, in waters up to 180 feet deep
• Chunnel, linking Britain and France is only 30 miles long
• Project would take 20 years to build

MOSCOW, Russia (AP) -- For more than a century, entrepreneurs and engineers have dreamed of building a tunnel connecting the eastern and western hemispheres under the Bering Strait -- only to be brought up short by war, revolution and politics.

Now die-hard supporters are renewing their push for the audacious plan -- a $65 billion highway project that would link two of the world's most inhospitable regions by burrowing under a stretch of water connecting the Pacific with the Arctic Ocean.

Russians and Americans alike made their pitch for the project at a conference titled "Megaprojects of Russia's East," held Tuesday in Moscow.

"It's time to the rewrite the old slogan 'Workers of the world unite!"' said Walter Hickel, a former Alaska governor and interior secretary under President Richard Nixon. "It's time to proclaim, 'Workers -- Unite the world!"'

A Russian Economics Ministry official tossed cold water on the idea, saying he wanted to know who planned to pay the mammoth bill for the project before seriously discussing it. But Hickel was unfazed in his speech, saying the route would unlock hitherto untapped natural resources -- and bolster the economies of both Alaska and Russia's Far East.

The proposed 68-mile tunnel would be the longest in the world. It would also be the linchpin for a 3,700-mile railroad line stretching from Yakutsk -- the capital of a gold- and mineral-rich Siberian region roughly the size of India -- through extreme northeastern Russia, in waters up to 180 feet deep and into the western coast of Alaska. Winter temperatures there routinely hit minus 94 F.

A group of Russians and Americans pitched a $65 billion project Tuesday that would link their two countries by a highway under the Bering Strait, the stretch of water that connects the Arctic and Pacific oceans. The tunnel would start at approximately Wales, Alaska, and connect to approximately Uelen, Russia, according to the Interhemispheric Bering Strait Tunnel & Railroad Group.

By comparison, the undersea tunnel that is now the world's longest -- the Chunnel, linking Britain and France -- is only 30 miles long.

That raises the prospect of some tantalizingly exotic routes -- train riders could catch the London-Moscow-Washington express, conference organizers suggested.

Lobbyists claimed the project is guaranteed to turn a profit after 30 years. As crews construct the road and rail link, they said, the workers would also build oil and gas pipelines and lay electricity and fiber-optic cables. Trains would whisk cargos at up to 60 mph 260 feet beneath the seabed.

Eventually, 3 percent of the world's cargo could move along the route, organizers hope.

Private investment called for

Maxim Bystrov, deputy head of the federal agency for managing Special Economic Zones, injected a note of sobriety to the heady talk of linking East and West by road and rail. He said his ministry would invest in the project only when private investors said they were committed to building it.

"As a ministry employee I am used to working with figures and used to working with projects that have an economic and financial base," Bystrov said. "The word 'prozhekt' has a negative meaning in Russian. I want this 'prozhekt' to turn into a 'project."'

The idea has a long history. Russia's last czar, Nicholas II, twice approved the implementation of a similar plan, perhaps eying the gold- and oil-rich territory that the Russian Imperial government had sold to the United States just before the turn of the 20th century.

The First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution doomed both attempts.

Despite the allure, there were signs Tuesday that there is no light at the end of this particular tunnel. A top economic adviser to President Vladimir Putin, as well as the Russian railway minister, who had been billed to speak, pulled out at the last minute.

$120 million in study costs alone

The feasibility study alone would cost $120 million and would take two years to complete, organizers said. Actual construction of the road-rail-pipeline-cable effort could take up to 20 years.

Still, Vladimir Brezhnev, president of Russian construction conglomerate Transstroi, said that the technology to tackle the construction work existed.

"Perhaps not all of us will be involved in this," he told conference participants. "But as an engineer I wish I could be."

A statement adopted at the conference Tuesday called on the governments of Russia, the United States, Japan, China and the European Union to endorse the tunnel as part of their economic development strategies. It urged government officials to raise the issue at the G-8 summit in Germany in June.

George Koumal, president of the Interhemispheric Bering Strait Tunnel and Railroad Group -- the noncommercial organization pushing for the project -- said that while many have seen England from France and vice versa across the Channel, there is little communication between the people living on either side of the Bering Strait.

"There are very few people who have stood on the beach in Alaska," he said. "Seemingly you can stretch out your hand and touch Mother Russia."

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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