The government"s news service announced Monday that Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov signed a resolution for work on the new pipeline, which will have an annual capacity of 50 million tons, RIA Novosti reported.

It will run from Unecha, Russia, which is near the Belarus border, to Primorsk terminal in Russia, near the border with Finland. It will carry Siberian oil to Germany, the rest of Europe and the United States, bypassing Belarus and Poland.

The new pipeline will allow Russia to stop pumping oil to Europe via the Druzhba pipeline, which runs across Belarus and pumps 80 million tons of oil annually to Germany, Poland and Ukraine, RIA Novosti reported.

PIN/UPI