Construction of Gazprom's 463-meter tall "Lakhta Center" in St. Petersburg will begin in October, the head of the Gazprom subsidiary in charge of the project said to information agency RIA Novosti. Gazprom received permission from the city to build the skyscraper complex on the shore of the Gulf of Finland earlier in August. The site is ten kilometers from the city center. An earlier proposal to build in downtown St. Petersburg, at Okhta Cape, had to be scrapped in the face of stiff public opposition. "Construction will proceed in phases," said Alexander Bobkov, the head of ZAO Okhta Public and Business Center, which is overseeing construction of the complex. "The tower itself will take the longest to build. I think we will break ground in October, since there are no legal or technical issues," Bobkov said. The 334 thousand square meter complex will serve as the headquarters for Gazprom's oil arm, Gazprom Neft, and other Gazprom subsidiaries. Construction is scheduled for completion in the spring of 2018. Bobkov did not specify the overall price tag for the project, but said one square meter is expected to cost US$ 2,5 - 3,5 thousand, much less than the estimated US$ 1.9 billion to build at the Okhta site.

St. Petersburg's construction and architecture committee permitted the state-controlled Gazprom gas giant to build a skyscraper on the Gulf of Finland, the company's public and business center said on Friday. Gazprom owns a plot of land in the area and plans to build a 470-meter tall office and an entire business center, Lakhta Center, nine kilometers to the north of the city center. In mid July, a lower commission for land and construction recommended that the project be allowed. The official limit for buildings in the area is 27 meters tall but the architecture committee said the limit would be extended to 500 meters for the Gazprom project. The new Lakhta Center project will be built on an area of 140 thousand square meters by 2018, and is designed to be a self-sufficient mini-town outside the St. Petersburg residential area. The offices of the Gazprom Neft company, the oil arm of Gazprom, and other Gazprom subsidiaries will be at the center of the project. Earlier, Gazprom wanted to build Okhta Center with a 400-meter tall skyscraper on the Okhtinskaya Cape in central St. Petersburg. The decision caused protests from community and the company withdrew the project late last year and sold the plot of land.

Russia has announced big plans for a superhighway that would effectively connect all the continents in the Northern Hemisphere, making it possible to travel from New York westward through Russia and on to London without the need for an airplane or a boat. The exact route hasn't been determined yet, but what is clear is that a plan such as this would create the largest, longest superhighway on Earth. The idea, dubbed the Trans-Eurasian Belt Development (TERP), would see a high speed railway and motorway built from Eastern Europe, across Siberia and over the Bering Strait to Alaska. At a meeting of the Russian Academy of Science, the head of the Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin presented the idea for the Trans-Eurasian belt Development (TEPR). Mr Yakunin has been engaged in the development of the project with academic Gennady Osipov and the rector of Moscow State University, Viktor Sadovnichy. During the meeting Vladimir Yakunin told that the project could link existing networks and supercharge global economic growth. The project would see not only a new train network built alongside the Trans-Siberian Railway but the construction of major roads, pipelines for oil and gas, and the laying of facilities for electricity and water supplies. "This is an inter-state, inter-civilization, project. It should be an alternative to the current model, which has caused a systemic crisis. The project should be turned into a world "future zone", and it must be based on leading, not catching, technologies," he said, according to the Siberian Times newspaper. If the idea is successful, it is expected that could create 10 to 15 new industries, new cities and a huge number of new jobs, as well as further development of Siberia and the Far East. Talking about a rough estimate for the costs of the project he said that it will require trillions of dollars, but insisted the economic returns would outweigh these investments. Today not all countries can provide high-speed railway network needed for this project. In Eastern Europe the European Union is separately drawing up plans for a high speed rail corridor to connect the Baltic States to Western Europe's high speed rail network - which runs through the Channel Tunnel to London. North American passenger railways are comparative undeveloped, however. Plans drawn up by President Obama to develop high speed rail corridors across the United States have stalled amid opposition. Bridges and tunnels spanning the Bering Strait have been proposed since the late 19th century but none has ever been built. The Russian government has expressed public support for a number of proposals in recent years but ground has not been broken on any of them, reported The Independent. China and Russia also unveiled a separate plan last year to connect, as well as a plan for a continent-spanning rail network that could cross the Bering Strait .