YAKUTSK, September 01, /ITAR-TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived on Monday in the country’s eastern Siberian city of Yakutsk to meet with students and faculty of a local university and visit the construction site of a Russian natural gas pipeline project.

On September 1 Russia marks the Day of Knowledge and in Yakutsk, the capital city of the Sakha Republic located about 450 kilometers (280 miles) south of the Arctic Circle, President Putin intends to meet with students and professors of the North-Eastern Federal University named after M.K. Ammosov.

The Kremlin press service said earlier that Putin will discuss in Yakutsk state support for priority investment projects and territories of advanced development in the Far East at a meeting with the heads of the federal ministries, regional administrations and major companies.

Later in the day Putin was scheduled to attend a ceremony of connecting the first stage of Russia’s new pipeline Sila Sibiri (Power of Siberia) intended for natural gas supplies to the Russian Far East and China.

State-owned oil company Rosneft is the major lobbyist of independent gas exports through the Sila Sibiri pipeline. The company has been in negotiations with Russian energy giant Gazprom lately on supplying up to 18 billion cubic meters of gas annually via the pipeline from its fields in East Siberia.

Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller earlier said that the Sila Sibiri pipeline would also help develop gas supply infrastructure in the Amur Region and the Jewish Autonomous Area in the Russian Far East.

The Sila Sibiri pipeline’s first stage is to be launched at the end of 2017. The pipeline will have an annual capacity of 61 billion cubic meters of natural gas.

Gazprom earlier signed a $400 billion 30-year contract to supply 38 billion cubic meters of gas per year to China.