October 12, 2008

Delivery of pipes for Nord Stream begins this week

DPA reported that the delivery of pipes for Nord Stream gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea begins this week,

A train is soon to arrive in Sassnitz, a small German port, with the first load of about 100 steel pipes for the 1,220 kilometer pipeline. Construction is to begin soon of a plant in Sassnitz to coat the 60,000 sections with up to 11 centimeters of concrete. Later, ships will carry the coated sections out to sea and lower them into place on the seabed.

The Nord Stream line, the biggest pipeline project ever in the Baltic, is to carry Russian gas to a distribution point in Germany. Poland, Sweden and other nations have voiced opposition to it. When completed, the pipeline is to supply Western Europe with 27.5 billion cubic meters of Russian gas per year. The German end will emerge from the water at Lubmin, a small town near Greifswald.

Mr Jens D Mueller spokesman of Nord Stream said that "We aim to deliver the first gas in 2011. The building timetable had been optimized to allow more time for impact studies and negotiations with the authorities, but we aim to complete the permissions in 2009.”

Manufacturing the coated pipes, which will have a total weight of 860,000 tonnes, will cost Nord Stream more than EUR 1 billion but getting them to the seabed will cost more. The total cost of the pipeline is now being estimated at EUR 7.4 billion.

Nord Stream is a consortium of Gazprom of Russia with 51% stake, Wintershall and E.ON Ruhrgas of Germany with 20% each and Gasunie of the Netherlands with 9%.

In order to start laying pipes next year, more than one third of the sections, or 400 kilometers of piping, will have to be ready and waiting at the various storage points.