Greece shows interest in building South Stream section in its territory
South Stream, which will be jointly built by Gazprom and ENI, will eventually take 30 billion cubic metres of Russian natural gas a year to southern Europe
ATHENS, May 29. /ITAR-TASS/. Greece’s senior government official said the country shows interest in building the South Stream gas pipeline section via its territory.
“The construction of the South Stream section via Greece will make cooperation with Russia’s gas giant Gazprom more dynamical,” Greek Minister of the Environment, Energy and Climate Change Yiannis Maniatis said on Thursday.
He spoke at the 17th annual European Business Congress (EBC), chaired by Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller.
“This will be the safer route for Russian natural gas supplies to Greece,” he said.
South Stream pipeline project
South Stream, which will be jointly built by Gazprom and ENI, will eventually take 30 billion cubic metres of Russian natural gas a year to southern Europe. Analysts say that the project will cost around €10 billion, or $15.8 billion.
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.
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.