Transneft's president Nikolai Tokarev is understood to have discussed the decision with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Planning for the second phase of the pipeline is now under way, and will be completed by the end of this year, Mr Tokarev was quoted as telling Mr Medvedev, and the feasibility study for the project will be ready by the middle of 2009. The pipeline between Taishet, near Lake Baikal, and Perevoznaya Bay, near Nakhodka on the Pacific coast, has already been planed to be constructed in two stages. Construction of the initial 2,400-km route to Skovorodino, near the Russian-Chinese border, began in Taishet in 2006.