A $9.6 billion project to build an electricity transmission line to Japan from Sakhalin in Russia was presented recently by the UES.

The project involves building a 4 million KW steam-gas electric station on Sakhalin that will supply 25.5 billion kWh a year to Japan by 2012. One-fourth of that amount will be delivered to the grid on Hokkaido and the rest to the Honshu grid. UES chief executive Anatoly Chubais and the governor of Sakhalin region, Igor Farkhutdinov, will sign an agreement covering fuel supplies for the planned station.

The station will be powered with gas extracted at the fields in the Sakhalin-1 and Sakhalin-2 contract territories.

The project also involves construction of 1,400 km of transmission lines, including 400 km on land and a four-strand underwater cable to Hokkaido and Honshu. Substations will be built at the points the cable leaves the coast.

The electricity will cost $0.016 per kWh to generate and $0.032 per kWh to transmit, according to figures contained in the preliminary project study, presented by the head of strategy and development at UES, Yuri Kucherov. The electricity will sell on the Japanese market for $0.06 - $0.08 per kWh.

The line will export $1.5 billion worth of electricity each year. The station will generate up to 28 billion kWh per year, of which 25 billion kWh will be exported and the remainder consumed locally.