President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev: Dear friends,
This is a great day. We have a very important event for Kamchatka Territory taking place right now – the launch of the Sobolevo-Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky gas pipeline. This is a long-awaited event that has taken years to achieve, and only the recent intense efforts finally made it possible to complete this project.
But we all realise it is actually only the beginning, because this mainline pipeline forms the backbone (with its almost 400 kilometres of length) for supplying gas throughout the region to industry and, even more important, to ordinary people. This will bring people a new quality of life, giving them normal living conditions and the chance to use gas at home and use gas to expand the range of economic and social projects that the region needs so much. This is without doubt a very important and long-awaited event.
I sincerely congratulate everyone here, and I thank Gazprom for building this mainline pipeline in a fairly short space of time. This was work well done.
At the same time, I wish you good luck with the next stage of the work, because ahead of you, you have the pipeline’s operation to run and new projects that the region awaits very eagerly.
I congratulate you all and wish you success.