CEO: Gazprom’s partners fulfill Nord Stream-2 2017 financing

MOSCOW, Dec 26 (PRIME) -- European partners of Russian gas giant Gazprom in construction of the Nord Stream-2 natural gas pipeline have fulfilled all their financing liabilities for 2017, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said on Tuesday during a company’s conference.

“Preparations for the start of construction of the Nord Stream-2 pipeline are going on in accordance with the schedule. We work with European companies here. As of today, financing of this project has been coming from the European companies in a perfect way. In particular, they fulfilled their financing liabilities for 2017 several days ago,” he said.

The Nord Stream-2 project envisages construction of two lines of a natural gas pipeline with an annual capacity of up to 55 billion cubic meters, running from the Russian shore to Germany under the Baltic Sea. Russian gas giant Gazprom will implement the project together with its European partners – Shell, OMV, Engie, Uniper, and Wintershall.

Gazprom remains the sole shareholder of the project and will invest 4.75 billion euros, while the European partners agreed to bear 50% of the project costs, or 950 million euros each. Project financing is to cover 70% of the pipeline costs.

TURKSTREAM PIPELINE

The company has already laid more than 650 kilometers of the two threads of TurkStream.

“This year has become very important for us in the framework of the TurkStream project. We’ve launched construction of two threads of the deep-sea part of the gas pipeline near the Russian coast, and now we are doing the work in the exclusive economic zone of Turkey,” Miller said.

“As of today, we have constructed more than 650 kilometers of the pipeline, which accounts for more than 35% of the combined length of two threads of the deep-sea part of the TurkStream pipeline.”

Gazprom started building the TurkStream pipeline on May 7. The pipeline will consist of two lines with a length of over 900 kilometers and a capacity of 15.75 billion cubic meters each. One of them, to be finished in 2018, is to carry Russian gas to Turkey, while the other is to transit gas to European countries through Turkey and is to be finished in 2019.

SILA SIBIRI PIPELINE

Miller also said that Gazprom will construct 1,380 kilometers of the Sila Sibiri (Power of Siberia) pipeline by the end of 2017.

“We are actively developing infrastructure of the Chayanda field in the east. We are building the linear part of the Sila Sibiri pipeline, and we will construct 1,380 kilometers by the end of the year, or two thirds of the pipeline’s length. And we will launch gas exports to China absolutely on time, on December 20, 2019,” he said.

In May 2014, Gazprom and CNPC signed a contract to supply up to 38 billion cubic meters of gas per year via the Sila Sibiri pipeline. The pipeline will be around 4,000 kilometers long. Gazprom plans to launch gas delivery through the eastern route in 2019 with an initial amount of 5 billion cubic meters.

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