By ALLAN HALL and WILL STEWART

Last updated at 12:49 28 March 2008

He became a billionaire by tunnelling through the ruins of the Soviet economy. Now Roman Abramovich has bought the world's biggest drill.







Chelsea Football Club's Russian owner has forked out £80million on the boring-machine, which will have a 63ft diameter, almost a quarter wider than its nearest rival.

The acquisition was announced in Moscow yesterday by Mr Abramovich's construction firm Infrastruktura. Few details were given but there was immediate speculation that the drill would be used to build a tunnel linking Russia and America under the 55-mile wide Bering Strait.

The tycoon is thought to share outgoing Russian President Vladimir Putin's vision of a "WorldLink" tunnel connecting the frozen wastes of Chukotka, the Russian region of which Mr Abramovich is governor, to Alaska.

"It is one of Putin's dream projects and he has already had secret talks with Washington about it," claimed an insider.

"He sees Russia as the hub of the world and wants Europe to transport its goods, as well as his own, across his country to the U.S."

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The drill, which will take German firm Herrenknecht AG two years to build, would create the world's longest undersea tunnel and reunite the land masses of Russia and America for the first time since the last Ice Age. Such a tunnel was first mooted a century ago under Tsar Nicholas II but foundered with the advent of the Russian Revolution.

The idea was revived after the Soviet Union's collapse but was shelved in Russia's financial meltdown of 1998.

Officials insist a tunnel could be ready within ten years, and would repay construction costs by stimulating up to 100million tons of freight traffic each year, as well as supplying oil, gas and electricity from Siberia to the U.S. and Canada.

Mr Abramovich's spokesman John Mann denied the order of the giant drill was related to any plans for a tunnel in Chukotka. However, the tycoon denied any plans to separate from his wife Irina in October 2006 - five months before announcing his divorce.

U.S. authorities said they had not received any definite plans for a tunnel to be built under the Bering Strait and would not comment on whether there had been any direct approach from Mr Putin.

The boring machine which currently holds the record as the world's biggest has a 50ft diameter and was bought by China to build a tunnel under the Yangtze.

The tunnels bored beneath the Channel to link the UK with France were created by machines with diameters of 25ft.