A major new gas pipe connecting Russia to Germany will be up and running by 2011 Russia predicts, with Paris expected to join Berlin in giving the scheme political backing inside the EU.
“The need to diversify routes of supplying gas from my country to EU member states has been underlined by this crisis,” Russia’s EU ambassador, Vladimir Chizhov, told EUobserver on Tuesday (20 January), as Russia’s transit deadlock with Ukraine came to an end.
“The Nord Stream project will now be expedited and I believe that in early 2011 it will able to provide gas,” he added.
“The land sections of this pipeline are already built and pipes are being produced on a daily basis for the underwater section. There are special ships needed to lay those pipes and they will start doing that as Spring comes.”
Nord Stream is to bring gas from the Shtokman, Yuzhno-Russkoye and Prirazlomnoye fields in Russia to Greifswald in Germany, from where it will branch out west.
German firms E.ON and BASF are major shareholders in the venture. But Germany alone has failed to overcome political objections from eastern EU states, such as Poland and Lithuania, which fear Nord Stream will enable Russia to cut off their gas in the event of a bilateral dispute.
“It’s a key Russian objective to bring France on board, to have a broad political coalition in Europe, not just Germany,” European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) expert Pierre Noel said.
