Brussels, 07/11/2011 (Agence Europe) - The new sub-sea gas motorway linking Russia with Germany via the Baltic Sea, the North Stream gas pipeline, is being officially inaugurated on Tuesday in Lubmin.
In Lubmin (former GDR) on Tuesday 8 November, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, French Prime Minister François Fillon, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger are inaugurating the opening of the valves of the first conduit of the North Stream pipeline. North Stream, which is 1,223 km long under the Baltic Sea, links Germany and Russia between the ports of Greifswald and Vyborg. At full capacity, when its second conduit is operational at the end of 2012, it will bring 55 billion m3 of Russian gas to the Community market every year.
Costing €7.4 billion, the highly controversial project (EUROPE 9863) is managed by the Russian gas giant Gazprom (51%), in partnership with the German energy companies BASF and E.ON, GDF-Suez of France and the Dutch Gasunie; the former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (1998-2005) is still president of the board of Governors of the consortium tasked with building and operating the project. It is worth noting that North Stream enjoys no Community financial support.
North Stream, which seeks to avoid the frequent gas disputes between Russia and Ukraine, via which 80% of Russian gas destined for the EU market transits, faced opposition from the Baltic countries and Poland, which were annoyed at being kept out of the initially German-Russian project. In 2006, a Polish minister went so far as to compare the project to the non-aggression pact between the USSR and Nazi Germany of 1939. North Stream also raised concerns of an ecological and security nature from Sweden. “There were misgivings, but good sense won the day”, said Russia's ambassador to Germany, Vladimir Grinin, on Monday. (EH/transl.fl)