Pacific Railway to export coal to be launched in 2025 - Putin

MOSCOW. Sept 26 (Interfax) - The Pacific Railway will be launched in 2025, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the plenary session of the Russian Energy Week on Thursday.

"The Far East's coal mining center's capacity is expanding. Incidentally, the Pacific Railway will start operating next year. This is a private route from the Elginskoye deposit in Yakutia to the port of Elga in the Khabarovsk Territory," he said.

The Elgaugol coal company is building the Pacific Railway to export coal from the deposit through the Elga port on the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk, which the company is also building itself, with capacity of 30 million tonnes.

Elgaugol began building the railway in 2022. Earlier it was reported that the company expects to launch the railway and port by the end of 2024.

The Elginskoye deposit is Russia's biggest and one of the world's biggest coking coal deposits, with JORC-compliant reserves of about 2.2 billion tonnes.