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.
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.
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 projects. The tunnel would contain a high-speed railway, highway and pipelines, as well as power and fiber-optic cables.
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.
Folks at Bloomberg seem to have beaten everyone to this story. Terrific potential, of course, for raw materials from Siberia and Sakha.
Thanks, Tom Moran
cool
I take it the train will be for freight. I cant imagine taking a rail trip at 100 MPH. I could see this happening as just a pipeline but a chunnel that long i dont know.
Isn’t that part of the world rather geologically active for a tunnel that long. You know … ring of fire and all.
Man, that sounds like an impossible project.
Now there is a project for the bold. Once you reach the mainland on the Alaska side, you have another 600 miles (roadless!) to Fairbanks, AK, where you can connect with the Alaska Highway to Canada and the 48 contiguous US states or to Anchorage or Valdez with established ports.
The economic payoff would be huge, but even the 600 straight line miles across frozen tundra would be tough. Nice boost for my town, though. I live in Fairbanks.
Jeez, what wimps. Why not build a REAL tunnel, say from L.A. to Hawaii? Now THAT would be a cool tunnel.
HONOLULU, 2350 Miles…
HONOLULU, 2325 Miles…
HONOLULU, 2300 Miles…
“Daddy I gotta go to the BATHROOM!!!”
2. Good Point. Kinda like a subway in L.A.?
OK ok i got, “Pipe dream” shoot me now.
Although the Bering Strait is not actually over an extensive nor active fault system, I yet would mistrust such a tunnel. Many years ago, mayhap in Popular Mechanics, was an article concerning a bridge, from Russia to the Diomedes, and thence to Alaska. Ice damage concerns were obviated by a design of ferro cement foundations, designed with a correct curve so that moving ice would be forced upward, thus cracking and disintegrating. With such a design, that particular bridge concept was allegedly safe.
Frankly, I’d feel a lot better riding atop a bridge than inside a 65 mile tunnel.
4. Exactamundo.
As a resident of Alaska, I’d like to see a road built to western Alaska first. But, maybe if this chunnel happens, the road will follow.
It’s ironic that they’ll be using the pipeline to move oil and natural gas into the state in the US with an enormous supply of its own oil and natural gas.
The next question is: why build it at all? I expect China would be quite happy to buy and use all the oil and natural gas that Russia is capable of supplying.
They keep saying the world is going to run out of oil. What they really mean is that North America will run out. The rest of the world will keep going. Just a little longer.
I’m confused as to why it would have to be a tunnel… unless they want to avoid the weather. There’s plenty of ice up their to build a cheap causeway on.
Power links, if of sufficient capacity, could create a world-wide grid, with all the benefits (load balancing) and hazards (Ohio) that go with it.
So far as seismic activity goes, it looks on the map:
http://www.iris.edu/seismon/
that the Ring of Fire goes well to the south. If I understand correctly, the link isn’t along the Aleutians, it’s hundreds of miles to the North of there.
Of course, the cost of this tunnel will not be counted in your price for gasoline or as part of the figure used to determine the efficiency of oil and gas versus wind and solar for power generation.
We’ll just keep lying to ourselves and saying oil and gas are the best!!
We’ll also continue to ignore the cost of defending the oil and gas supply via military might from the cost. And we’ll definitely forget about the cost of the government subsidies for oil and gas exploration, etc., etc., etc.
#6
I recall on the Discovery Channel (or similar channel) a program about building a bridge. The big challenge are the ice floes that would constantly grind against the support pylons. While Canada’s Confederation Bridge does provide a number of technological innovations to the bridge problem, all the problems are bigger, swifter, longer and colder in the Strait.
#1
I rode the Eurostar London to Paris a few years ago. The trip from London to the Chunnel and through to the other side was well below 60mph. It wasn’t until it got to the French side, they cranked up to 150mph. I would imagine that speed would be restricted for safety reasons while in a tunnel.
If Russia puts in the tunnel on their dime I’ll bet we pony up for a highway to meet it.
Great idea but I just don’t see it happening in the next 30 years.
Gawd, what a movie set that tunnel would make. Time for a Steven Seagal vs Vin Diesel actioner.
Nice concept, sort of like the ‘elevator into space’… queries and points:
1) Trucks and trains? Can’t we do this with freighters, right now? What’s more efficient?
2) Nice backdoor from a national defense (pick a nation on either side) perspective.
3) $10-12 billion? Umm, no, it will cost WAY WAY more than that… humankind and governments have repeatedly and consistently underestimated the costs of building and maintaining transportation routes for thousands of years.
4) Ice? WTF you talking about sea-borne ice for? Hint, hint: tunnels that go under the water will go under the ice, too. Duh. Plus, with all the neato global warming this would promote, there won’t be any ice (but we’re back to boats being a better idea).
5) Why a tunnel for vehicles? If it’s going to carry “oil, natural gas and electricity”, doesn’t oil and natural gas flow just fine through pipelines (smaller safer stronger tunnels), and electricity flows through copper wire (although you lose a LOT of power over that distance)?? What, are we now talking tourism to Siberia or northern Alaska? Try Fiji, Hawaii, the Canary Islands, Venice, Tokyo, etc….
Summarily, there isn’t a story here. At least we’re not talking about the friggin’ Virginia Tech loser rampage.
Russia’s new plan to invade the US?
Wow… that means I would theoretically be able to go all the way from Portugal to the most southern point of the American continent, always by land transport… it is an abstract thought (the distance would be huge), though a very interesting one. 🙂
Only 2 remarks for this one – though it is interesting and probably will happen for a number of engineering and commercial reasons:
1. It will be possible to drive to Irkutsk and fish Lake Baikal for one of those 150 lb. trout. Will the Alaskans let you bring one back into the country?
2. #19 knows little about tunnel construction, pipelines, railroads – apparently anything to do with logistics and traffic – not even worth debating. No surprise the Japanese are coming in low; but, that low?
Why not take dirt and rock from tunneling through some of the mountain passes that it’s goign to take to get to Fairbaks fromt he bridge and dump it into the water and make a 60 mile land bridge between the 2 continents, if mad walked across it during the last ice age, it shouldn’t be very deep and the rail like you use to move all of this earth could be put to work right away, it is a no brainer, make a rail line and fill in a sixty mile stip 1 mile wide of somewhat shallow water and boom a real land bridge! Either that or make an underwater train to avoid the ice completely.
History provides us with several examples of “monster projects” such as the proposed Bering Straits Tunnel. See the Suez and Panama Canal, and more recently the Channel Tunnel between France and Great Britain, all of which are still going strong and prove extremely useful.
Yet each of these projects proved a major disaster for the inital investors, because when they thought were buying a right to cash in on commercial traffic via a particular canal or tunnel, it turned out they had in fact paid for the right to be liable for unknown or misrepresented building costs which invariably rocketed way over and above what they were gullible enough to believe in the prospectus.
This age-old principle has proved itself time and time again.
We must be particularly wary when Russia is involved.
Viktor RAZBEGIN of the Russian Economy Ministry tells us not to worry because “the governments will act as guarantors for private money”.
A century ago more than a million French households massively invested in Russian government, infrastructure, utilities, and railway bonds.
They all came with a Russian government guarantee.
Not a single one has ever been paid back.
Today the Russian Federation still refuses all form of contact with 400000 present day bondholders. The total amount outstanding is in excess of US$80 billion.
How could anyone trust Mr. RAZBEGIN and his chiefs?
Mr. RAZBEGIN, before issuing new worthless Russian government guarantees you must first deliver on the outstanding ones.
To avoid losing ALL your investment please read the following INVESTOR ALERT below. This is not rhetoric. This is present-day economics.
RUSSIAN INVESTOR ALERT
French holders of Russian government bonds remind investors that the Russian Federation is still in default today (April 2007) on their estimate of some US$ 90 billion owed to them since the Bolshevik, then the Soviet, and now the Russian Federation governments have all unilaterally repudiated Tsarist debt and refused any form of contact or dialogue with their legitimate bona fide creditors.
They also remind investors that in its Sep. 15th 2006 report entitled “Governance matters: a decade of measuring the quality of governance”, the WORLD BANK has rated Russia’s governance comparable to that of Swaziland, Zambia and Kazakhstan. Russia came 151st out of 208 countries in terms of (…) accountability, quality of regulatory bodies, and rule of law, (…). In particular, rule of law (i.e. the courts and the quality of contract enforcement) was judged as effective in Russia as it is in Ecuador, Indonesia, and Bangladesh. Nicaragua, East Timor, and China’s ability to control corruption was judged similar to Russia’s.
On February 26th 2007 the St. Petersburg Times, quoting a report from Vedomosti, wrote that “Surgutneftegaz managers covertly hold 72 % of the secretive oil firm” and that Deutsche UFG had had to “raise its estimate number of outstanding shares from less than 26 billion to (…) 43 billion” which “implies a 40% dilution in the value of the stock”.
In Paris on April 3rd 2007 to launch the merged NYSE-EURONEXT entity Mr. John Thain, the New York Stock Exchange CEO, warned that he was “very concerned about the quality of corporate governance, the transparency of company financials and the protection of minority shareholders. A number of Russian companies raise serious questions around these issues.”
Despite these findings, and the main rating agencies’ knowledge that Russia is in default on US$ 90 billion of Tsarist debt, Russia is rated “INVESTMENT GRADE” whereas it should clearly be in “SELECTIVE DEFAULT”.
French bondholders intend to pursue their claim until full settlement at present value, by any legal means and in any jurisdiction they deem appropriate.
EVERY POTENTIAL INVESTOR IN RUSSIA MUST BE MADE AWARE OF THESE RISKS.
FRENCH CREDITORS OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION STRONGLY ADVISE AGAINST ANY FORM OF INVESTMENT IN A COUNTRY WHOSE SOLVENT GOVERNMENT HAS IN THEIR VIEW SYTEMATICALLY REFUSED TO FULFIL ITS NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS, REFUSES ALL CONTACT AND DIALOGUE WITH ITS LEGITIMATE BONA FIDE CREDITORS, AND REFUSES TO DISCLOSE LIABILITIES WORTH US$ 90 BILLION.
April 2007
this is a good idea but #24 is right if russia wants to give governmental guarentees they need to follow up on the guarentees they gave out before specifically if russia is stupid enough to cheat an entire country out of 90 billion dollars they would have to be especially stupid to try to get the major super power of the world to get us to lend them 65 billion and further more #19 in his or her 5 point yes its a good idea to build tunnels or bridges to all of those vacation spots but think about it 3,700 mile compared to 5500 or 2502 miles there is a lot more space between Fiji,the Canary islands,Hawaii and tokyo