Royal Dutch/Shell Group and ChevronTexaco Corp. urged Russia to speed up the construction of oil pipelines, saying insufficient capacity is trapping fuel inside the country

Royal Dutch/Shell Group and ChevronTexaco Corp. urged Russia to speed up the construction of oil pipelines, saying insufficient capacity is trapping fuel inside the country and may deter investment to develop crude deposits in the world's top oil producer. The government also needs to ensure producers have equal access to Russian oil pipelines, John Barry, the head of Shell's Russian operations, and Sam Laidlaw, ChevronTexaco's executive vice president, told an investment conference in London. "Russia needs investment in oil infrastructure,'' Barry said. "I don't care whether Russian pipelines are private or state-owned. What I need is access to the pipelines.'' Russian oil producers, who ship most of their oil to Europe across the Black and Baltic seas, face bottlenecks in the country's state-owned pipelines and in the straits leading out of those seas to European ports. The resulting glut of oil in Russia keeps domestic crude prices at less than half the international level. The country has increased oil extraction 35 percent since 1999 and probably overtook Saudi Arabia as the world's top oil supplier this year.