Gazprom says documents ready to build maritime section of South Stream

South Stream Transport B.V., the operator company in construction of the maritime part of the South Stream gas pipeline project, has signed all the agreements necessary for launching construction of the maritime section of the pipeline in the fall of 2014, Gazprom said in a report upon a session of the company’s board of trustees that had been held in Amsterdam, ITAR-TASS reported on May 16.

Participants in the conference said all the works related to the pipeline’s maritime section were implemented strictly on time.

The South Stream Offshore Pipeline will run through the Black Sea from Russia to Bulgaria and have a total length of 930 kilometers. An environment impact assessment (EIA) in accordance with national environmental legislation is being conducted in Russia, Turkey and Bulgaria. In addition, South Stream Transport is undertaking an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) in alignment with the standards and guidelines of international finance institutions. This will involve an ESIA Report for each Sector of the Project and a consolidated document for the entire South Stream Offshore Pipeline to ensure a consistent approach.

The project stipulates for the offshore gas pipeline section to run under the Black Sea from the Russkaya compressor station on the Russian coast to the Bulgarian coast. The total length of the offshore section will be around 900 kilometers, the maximum depth - over two kilometers and the design capacity - 63 billion cubic meters. There are two optional routes for the onshore gas pipeline section: either northwestward or southwestward from Bulgaria.

In order to feed the required amount of gas to South Stream, Russia’s gas transmission system throughput will be increased through the construction of additional 2,446 kilometers of line-pipe and 10 compressor stations with the total capacity of 1,473 MW. This project has been named South Corridor and will be implemented in two phases before December 2019.

The construction of South Stream started on December 7, 2012 is scheduled to be completed by 2015. The overall capacity of the marine section of the pipeline will be 63 billion cubic meters a year. Its cost is about €16 billion.

Copyright: ITAR-TASS, 2014