MOSCOW, August 16 (Itar-Tass) —— All ready for filling the Nord Stream pipeline with gas, Gazprom reported on Tuesday. The company said that would happen in September.
Nord Stream is a 1,220-kilometer-long offshore natural gas pipeline stretching through the Baltic Sea, from Vyborg, Russia to Greifswald, Germany, which is to be built by Nord Stream AG. Nord Stream is a joint project of four major companies: Gazprom, BASF/Wintershall Holding AG, E.ON Ruhrgas AG and N.V. Nederlandse Gasunie. Such a powerful consortium is a guarantee of the best technology, security and corporate governance.
Initially one pipeline will be built with a transport capacity of around 27.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas per annum. In the second phase, a parallel pipeline will be laid to double the annual transport capacity to around 55 billion cubic meters.
In the Russian territory, a 917-kilometer-long on-shore connection is being built by Gazprom, to connect Nord Stream to the Russian gas transmission system.
Two on-shore connections from Greifswald to the south and west of Germany with a total length of 850 kilometers will be built by WINGAS and E.ON Ruhrgas.
Nord Stream runs through the Exclusive Economic Zones of Russia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Germany as well as through the territorial waters of Russia and Germany.
The route has been selected and optimized on the basis of an integrated evaluation of technical, environmental, cultural and economic factors. An integrated feasibility study conducted in 1997-1999 considered several alternative routes and landfall locations. The proposed route was judged the most feasible. Nord Stream will carry gas to Germany, from where it can be transported onwards to Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, the UK, and France. The project is open for planning peripheral pipelines to other European countries and regions in the North and West.
In all, the project will cost 7.4 billion euros. Gas deliveries will start in October 2011, with the beginning of the heating season. Nord Stream and 26 banks signed an agreement on a loan of 3.9 billion euros for the first phase of the project on March 16, 2010.