The South Stream Transport B.V. headquarters in Amsterdam (the Netherlands) hosted today the signing of contracts with regard to supply of 75 thousand 12-meter pipes for the first line of South Stream's offshore section.
The pipes will be supplied by German EUROPIPE (50 per cent of the whole volume), United Metallurgical Company (35 per cent) and Severstal (15 per cent). The total value of the contracts is approximately EUR 1 billion.
South Stream's offshore section is made up of four lines of 931 kilometers each, with a diameter of 813 millimeters and wall thickness of 39 millimeters. The unparalleled pipes made of X65 steel designed for an extreme operating pressure of 28.45 MPa will be used during the offshore section construction.
Once the required amount of pipes is stockpiled at temporary bases on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria, South Stream's offshore section construction will start in autumn 2014. The first offshore line is scheduled to start operations in December 2015.
“With a view to supply the offshore gas pipeline section with the required pipes of the adequate quality, a bidding procedure for the pipe product suppliers was based on extremely stringent requirements to the pipe specification. It's worth mentioning that half of the bid was justly won by the Russian pipe plants that yet again confirmed their status of reliable high-quality pipe product suppliers.
EUROPIPE, United Metallurgical Company and Severstal will supply pipes for the world's most technically unrivalled offshore gas pipeline. It is a big responsibility for the manufacturers. The time has come to move on to the gas pipeline construction stage,” stated Oleg Aksyutin, Member of the Management Committee, Head of the Gas Transportation, Underground Storage and Utilization Department of Gazprom; Chief Executive Officer of South Stream Transport B.V.
