Gazprom, Eni plan big gas pipeline under Black sea

Gazprom and Italian oil firm Eni unveiled a plan on Saturday for a big new pipeline to take Russian gas under the Black Sea to Europe, undermining an earlier plan to extend a Turkish route.

The 900 km “South Stream” pipeline would come ashore in Bulgaria and then branch to Austria and Slovenia in one spur and southern Italy in another, Eni’s CEO Paolo Scaroni told a news conference with Gazprom Deputy Chief Executive Alexander Medvedev.
State-controlled Gazprom has made a fetish of owning its export routes since a disruption to supplies during a pricing dispute with Ukraine at the start of 2006 which sparked outrage across Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia.

Since then Gazprom has launched a northern route known as “Nord Stream” under the Baltic Sea to Germany, in a consortium with E.ON and Wintershall, part of BASF.

Just as Nord Stream cuts out Ukraine, South Stream would bypass Turkey and isolate Gazprom’s gas supplies to southern Europe from any political risk in that country.

Apart from Germany, Italy is Gazprom’s second biggest customer outside the former Soviet Union, relying on Russia for around 22 billion cubic metres of gas a year.

South Stream will come online three years after getting the necessary approvals, with the project costs shared equally by the two companies, the firms said.

Zee News