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Yanovsky: Russia-EU disagreements on South Stream should be regulated by international law

On Thursday, December 5, Russia's Energy Ministry received a letter saying the agreements had not conformed to the norms of the EU Third Energy Package

MOSCOW, December 06, 15:54 /ITAR-TASS/. Disagreements between Russia and the European Union on the Gazprom agreements related to the South Stream construction should be regulated by international law, Russian Deputy Energy Minister Anatoly Yanovsky said on Friday.

On Thursday, December 5, the ministry received a letter saying the agreements had not conformed to the norms of the EU Third Energy Package, Yanovsky said.

The minister said intergovernmental agreements were being regulated by the Vienna Convention.

Earlier, Russia signed intergovernmental agreements with South Stream transit countries such as Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia, Austria, Slovenia and Croatia.

Spokeswoman to the European Commissioner for Energy Marlene Holzner told Itar-Tass that the agreements between Russia and the EU countries on the South Stream construction did not correspond to European legislation and should be finalized.

South Stream, which will be jointly built by Gazprom and ENI, will eventually take 30 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas a year to southern Europe. Analysts have said that the project will cost around 10 billion euro, or 15.82 billion U.S. dollars.

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 north-westwards or south-westwards 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.

South Stream is scheduled to become operational in 2013. The 900-kilometer-long undersea section of the pipeline will run from the gas compressor facility at Beregovaya, on Russia's Black Sea coast, near Arkhipo-Osipovka, towards the city of Burgas, in Bulgaria. The sea's maximum depth on this route is 2,000 meters.

South Stream is a strategic project for Europe's energy security and should be implemented by the end of 2015. Work is currently underway to draft a feasibility study for the marine section across the Black Sea and the surface section running through transit countries.

The overall capacity of the marine section of the pipeline will be 63 billion cubic meters per year. Its cost is about €8.6 billion.