Greece Interested in South Stream

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 today.

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, 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.