The American oil company, Chevron, says work will start immediately on a multi-billion dollar pipeline to deliver oil from the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan to the Russian port of Novorossiysk.

The deal, between a group of international oil companies and the governments of Russia, Kazakhstan and Oman, will help exploit Kazakhstan's massive Tengiz oil field.

The one-thousand-five-hundred kilometre pipeline will also reduce dependence on the old Soviet system which restricted the amount of oil that could be shipped out to the West.

The new pipeline is expected to deliver its first oil in 2001.