MOSCOW, March 27. /TASS/. The Danish Energy Agency has not rejected the Nord Stream 2 pipeline laying routes and requested an extra environmental expert review, a spokesperson of the Nord Stream 2 AG, the gas pipeline project operator, told TASS on Wednesday.
"The Danish Energy Agency has not rejected either the Southern Corridor or the so-called ‘Base Case’ in the territorial waters," the spokesperson said. "They have asked us for an additional environmental assessment," he noted.
"We have just received this request and will carefully evaluate this," the spokesman said.
Denmark is the only country that has not yet issued permit for pipeline construction in its territorial waters. Laws of the country make possible for the foreign ministry to decide whether the energy agency should consider such project or not. The application is under consideration from January 2018. Nord Stream 2 made a decision earlier to study alternative routes outside territorial waters of Denmark.
The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline is scheduled to be put into operation in late 2019. Each of the pipeline’s two stretches will have a capacity of 27.5 bln cubic meters. The pipeline, set to run from the Russian coast along the Baltic Sea bed to the German shore, is expected to connect the Russian resource base with European customers. The total project cost of the Nord Stream 2 is estimated at 9.9 bln euro.