TASS, July 24. Experts forecast the Northern Latitudinal Railway (NLR) will serve 23.9 million tonnes of cargo a year, where the biggest share would be gas condensate, the Yamalo-Nenets Region’s governmental press service told reporters after a meeting between the region’s Head Dmitry Artyukhov and RZD’s CEO Oleg Belozerov.

"The concession project is a construction of more than 350km of a railway line, bridges across the Ob and Nadym Rivers," the press service said. "The construction is due between 2018 and 2023, and the forecasted cargo turnover is 23.9 million tonnes a year - mostly gas condensate and oil cargo."

The NLR project will be implemented on a public-private partnership basis in the form of a concession. The Yamalo-Nenets regional government will invest in construction of a road across the Ob River and will provide necessary paperwork, the press service added.

"RZD will reconstruct the Northern Railway’s and Sverdlovsk Railway’s neighboring passages, and Gazprom is responsible for an own railway line of 104km between Nadym and Pangoda," the press service added.

The Northern Latitudinal Railway

In May, the then Acting Minister of Transport Maxim Sokolov said the NLR construction was due to be over in 2023. Earlier information was the project’s term would be 2018-2022.

The Northern Latitudinal Railway is 707 km of a rail line, connecting Yamal with Uralsk and with Russia’s North-West. The railway will also connect the national transport systems via the Sabetta seaport with the Northern Sea Route. In October, 2016, RZD and government of the Yamalo-Nenets Region agreed the future latitudinal railway project. For RZD, it would be the first concessional project ever. The project’s cost is likely to be around 200 billion rubles ($3.6 billion).