-- Russian analysts have described as a great victory for Russia in implementing one of the most ambitious energy projects the consent Sweden and Finland have given to laying the Nord Stream gas pipeline in their economic zones.The future of the project looks settled, because it is still to be approved only by the initiators - Russia and Germany - and this will be sheer formality. Moscow hopes that very soon it will be able to sell gas to Europe without any risk of gas conflicts with transiters.
In fact, this means that the first line of the gas carrier will begin to be laid in the spring of 2010, as expected, go operational in 2011. The second line will be in place in 2012. The pipeline will link Vyborg with Germany's Greifswald.
The Swedish government on Thursday issued its permission to the Nord Stream consortium to lay two parallel gas pipes through its economic zone in the Baltic Sea.
"I would like to thank the Swedish counterparts, the Swedish government, for the decision made," Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said at a meeting of the Cabinet's presidium.
The Swedish authorities have put forward a number of conditions, though. All construction work must be paused for the period of codfish spawning, from May to October, which may affect the project's implementation dates.
Finland on Thursday coordinated the procedure of issuing a similar permission, too. Now the country's ecological agency is to issue two more permissions, including one for disposing of the old-time ammunition that may be found on the Baltic Sea's bed in Finland's exclusive economic zone.
The Swedish and Finnish economic zones will host 506 kilometers and 374 kilometers of the 1,223-kilometer pipeline respectively.
A week earlier Denmark was the first to have issued one of the five permissions necessary for Nord Stream.
The former Soviet republics and Poland had repeatedly urged their Scandinavian neighbors to block the project.
In the meantime, the initiators - Russia and Germany - have had to delay formalization procedures due to exclusively technical reasons and the documents are to be obtained in December.
When completed, Nord Stream will connect Russia and Germany across the Baltic Sea. The first line with a throughput of 27.5 billion cubic meters a year is to be finalized at the end of 2011, and its identical twin, in 2012. The project's value is estimated at 7.4 billion dollars. Two gas fields in Russia - Yuzhno-Russkoye and Shtokman - will constitute its reserve base.
A 51-percent stake in Nord Stream belongs to Gazprom, two equal 20- percent stakes, to Germany's E.ON and BASF, and nine percent, to the Netherlands' Gasunie. It is expected that the shares of German partners will be reduced to 15.5 percent soon, when France's GdF SUEZ joins in.
Sweden has remained one of the firmest opponents of Nord Stream for the past four years, says the daily Kommersant. At its demand the project' s operator dropped the idea of building a compressor facility near Swedish shores. The underwater pipeline will have no pumps supporting the pressure of gas.
The director of the National Energy Security Fund, Konstantin Simonov, sees Sweden's decision as a rather unexpected one.
"For several years Stockholm stuck to a very firm position and demanded holding talks literally "with each single fish" in the Baltic Sea," the daily quotes Simonov as saying. "The Swedes' gains from this project remain very unclear. The Finns will enjoy a zero export tax on timber for a couple of years, and Denmark will have Moscow's support for its initiatives at the UN conference on the Kyoto Protocol issue, due in Copenhagen in December. What such country as Sweden, which consumes almost no gas, will get in exchange is anyone's guess."
Sweden's favorable decision is particularly important for Nord Stream," says the daily Gazeta. "The future of that project depends heavily on that country, which was strongly against from the outset and put forward a number of extra demands in the sphere of ecology."
"It is hard to say which of the project's participants is more interested in its success," Gazeta quotes the general director of the Information and Analytical Center for Political Process Studies in the Post-Soviet Space at the Moscow State University, Alexei Vlasov, as saying. "In principle this idea is crucial to both Europe and to us. Therefore, I believe that there was not just plain bargaining with the Scandinavian countries over their consent, but a rather solid basis for the understanding that economically Europe will receive tangible gains."
Indeed, Europe's demand for stable energy supply is great, the expert said. And Nord Stream is a solution to many problems, such as those related with gas transit through Ukraine.
"It is equally important to both Russia and to Europe," says the general director of the Metaprocess closed joint stock company, Kirill Lyats.
"Europe needs it, because it is an extra source of gas that does not depend on transit through Ukraine or Belarus. And Russia needs it because we gain access to new markets in the North of Europe and create a more stable transport route for gas, which is of particular importance as new fields (in the first place, Bovanenkovskoye) are to go on stream."
Misha's Commentary
Misha's Note: The map above (click to enlarge) shows that European seas are already crisscrossed by a rather extensive network of undersea pipelines. Most of the existing European undersea pipelines currently pump gas from the North Sea. This North Sea gas production has now started to decline, and is set to decline still further, as North Sea gas reserves are gradually depleted.The technology of undersea pipelines is mature, and hardly something "new and experimental." Undersea pipelines have essentially no impact on the environment. Once they are laid, they basically "sit there" like any inert object at the bottom of the sea (a rock) would do. In the unlikely event of a pipeline rupture, the sudden drop in pressure would be automatically detected and the gas compressors would instantly stop pumping, until the rupture could be repaired. But even if some gas were to be released into the sea, in the few seconds before the automated equipment had the chance to cut off the flow, that gas would simply bubble to the surface and vent harmlessly into the atmosphere.
Now all of this is to say nothing about the hundreds of thousands of miles of undersea communications cables (copper and fiber optic alike) that currently crisscross European seas, the laying of which has about as much long term "environmental impact" as laying gas pipelines does (which is to say none whatsoever).
The issue of old Nazi munitions on the Baltic seabed is a somewhat legitimate concern, though one that has been blown out of all sane proportion by those opposed to Nord Stream for purely political reasons. In any case, current plans call for a detailed examination (both electronic and visual) of a 2 km wide swath along the entire pipeline route, to insure that no fascist munitions whatsoever will be disturbed in their watery graves. (See bottom of graphic here).
The Nord Stream consortium spent 4 years and over 100 million euros just on getting the required environmental permits. The simple fact is that the opponents of the pipeline had gone out on a long long limb with their so called "environmental' concerns. What could Nord Stream be expected to do next? Hire a team of "fish psychologists" to treat Baltic Sea fish affected by post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) caused by the laying of the pipeline? Eventually even the Swedes (among the most ardent critics of the project) had to admit that Nord Stream had addressed all legitimate environmental concerns, and that they no longer had a leg to stand on in continuing to oppose the project. To continue to oppose the project would have put Sweden on the wrong side of international law, as several Swedish ministers pointed out. Sweden's pride in scrupulously following international law is apparently what cinched the deal. Or, to put it another way, if Germany be for us then who can be against us?
The patience of the Russian partners was frequently stretched to its breaking point by the lengthy (and seemingly absurd) euro-approval process. Indeed, Russian PM Vladimir Putin at one point threatened to scrap the whole NS project and simply liquefy Siberian gas for export to world markets. However, the German partners counseled patience, saying that Russia just needed to "play the game," and that the eventual approval of the project was all but assured.
The map above shows a spur from the Nord Stream pipeline extending into Sweden, which seems rather strange, because there are currently no plans for such a spur, or at least none that I am aware of. However, this illustrates that the final shape of the pipeline is flexible and yet to be determined. There is no reason why a Swedish spur couldn't be constructed, as nothing is "etched in stone" at this point and the final shape of the pipeline is still quite flexible.
Poland, after initially opposing the Nord Stream project, has also recently expressed interest in obtaining a spur from Nord Stream, which would free Poland from its current reliance on gas transit through Belarus. However, it's more likely that Russia would prefer instead to build a spur to its Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad, and from there perhaps across the Polish border by land. This would have the added advantage (for Russia) of eliminating any threat of gas blackmail against Kaliningrad by its (Russia's) neighbors.
After all, why would Russia build a spur into Poland and then depend on the Poles to supply the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, when Russia could do just the opposite just as easily? Before you argue that Polish dependence on gas from Kaliningrad (Russia) would make Poland too dependent upon Russia for its access to Nord Stream (Russian) gas, please make sure you have thought your (undergradish) arguments through rather thoroughly.
Before you can even shout, "Nabbuco will supply Poland with gas," I will shout right back that there won't be any Nabbuco gas left for Poland, or for Europe for that matter, after that gas is first pumped thousands of km west and then pumped thousands of km right back east, to meet Ukraine's rather enormous needs for gas (a necessity that will become rather urgent rather quickly if and when Ukraine joins NATO and Russia responds with trade--read gas--sanctions against Ukraine). And, in the unlikely event that Ukraine does join NATO, it will spell the end of its quest to join the European Union (which is after all what the Ukrainians really want), as the two main players in the EU, Germany and France, are rather in alignment with Russian strategic thinking on the utter inadmissibility of Russia's post-imperial, post-Soviet "buffer" states into Western (read American) military institutions. As it happens, France and Germany don't want (yet another) war with Russia any more than Russia wants yet another war with them. As France and Germany well understand, the insane American push to "expand NATO into Ukraine" (through the 'assent' of some or another American CIA-installed stooge-government in Ukraine) makes a war with Russia not just likely but 100% inevitable.
If NATO is anything then it is a pact between its (current) member nations to guaranty their mutual defense and security through "collective defense." But transforming NATO from such a purely defensive alliance, among its (current) members, into an offensive and expansionary one, with a near 100 percent probability of such expansion triggering a war--a war that in all likelihood would threaten the very continued existence of man on earth--is rather contrary to the original collective-defensive purpose of the alliance, among its current membership. One hardly needs to be the proverbial rocket scientist to "get" this. The Germans and French may not all be rocket scientists, but they show every symptom of "getting" this quite well, thank you very much.
Of course there would be nothing stopping Poland from buying gas from Germany, once Nord Stream is completed, and this would also effectively free Poland from its current dependence on Belarus, even if no direct spur to the Baltic coast is built.
The current plan is to construct two main pipelines, each with a capacity of 27.5 bcm annually, one to be completed in 2011 and the other in 2012. Of course additional pipelines could also be constructed, should the current planned capacity (54 bcm) prove to be inadequate. Gazprom Deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev recently said that if there is a market for Russian gas in Europe, then Gazprom will build the capacity to supply it.
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