MOSCOW, April 4 (RIA Novosti) - Energy giant Gazprom said Tuesday it estimated the construction cost of the North European Gas Pipeline at $10.5 billion.
Deputy board chairman Alexander Medvedev told reporters the overland section of the North European Gas Pipeline (NEGP), connecting Russia and Germany along the Baltic seabed, would cost roughly $6 bln, and the underwater part $4.5 bln.
Medvedev, also general director of Gazexport, Gazprom's export arm, told a round table: "There is no doubt that the capacities of the NEGP's first leg will be used in full."
The construction plan includes two parallel gas pipeline legs, each 750 miles long. The first stage will see construction of one leg with capacity of 27.5 billion cu m, and the second phase will double the NEGP's capacity to 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year.
The NEGP is designed to create a direct route for natural gas deliveries from Russia to its biggest market in Western Europe, bypassing transit countries Ukraine and Poland.
Medvedev said that, with a fifth compressor station operational in Poland, the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline, which is pumping gas from Russia's deposits in north-western Siberian, had reached its projected annual capacity of 33 billion cu m.
He said gas deliveries to Turkey via the 16-bln-cu-m Blue Stream pipeline in 2005 amounted to 5 bln cu m, since the Turkish infrastructure was unable to deal with pipeline's overall capacity, adding that the Turkish authorities are planning to invest in improving infrastructure.
Blue Stream-2 may also be built, he said, as Gazprom is considering gas deliveries to southern European region via this route.
The 757-mile pipeline was constructed under a 1998 agreement for sales of Russian natural gas to Turkey. It comprises a 222-mile land section in Russia from Izobilnoye to Dzhugba on the Black Sea coast, a 235-mile along the Black Sea floor connecting Dzhugba to Samsun on the Turkish coast, and a 300-mile link from Samsun to Ankara.
