Putin to attend opening ceremony of Russia-China oil pipeline's Russian section

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will attend the opening ceremony of the Russian section in the Russia-China oil pipeline, which will take place in Russia's Far Eastern Amur region on Sunday.
The project is part of the East Siberia — Pacific oil pipeline, which was launched into operation in December 2009 and is designed to pump up to 1.6 million barrels (220,000 tons) of crude per day from Siberia to the Far East and then on to China and the Asia-Pacific region.
The Russia-China pipeline will stretch from the town of Skovorodino in the Amur region to the city of Daqing in China's northeastern Heilongjiang province.
In March, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said the construction of the pipeline would be finished by the end of the year and become fully operational in 2011.
Russia's largest oil company Rosneft, oil pipeline monopoly Transneft and China's state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) are partners in the project. In line with the contract, the Chinese side provided the Russian companies with a $25-billion loan to construct the pipeline. In exchange, the Russian side agreed to pump 15 million tons of oil per year via the pipeline in 2011-2030.