The first pipe string of the Nord Stream Pipeline hit dry land in Germany's coastal resort city of Lubmin, the Nord Stream AG project operator said on Monday. Dr. Georg Nowack, Nord Stream AG project manager for Germany, said the onshore connection was made on July 3 and was right on schedule. "This construction phase was important and exciting for us, not just from a technological point of view. It also has a symbolic significance, as the Nord Stream Pipeline has now reached the European mainland for the first time and, moreover here in Lubmin, the point where WINGAS is planning and already building the natural gas transfer station and the OPAL and NEL onshore pipelines," he said.
He said the pipeline was growing at up to 24 meters per hour and the second string was scheduled to reach land in mid-July. "From fall 2011, natural gas from the Nord Stream Pipeline will flow into the transfer station which is currently being built," the company said in a press release. Construction of the high-pressure systems in the station, which in the future will guarantee transport of up to 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas from the Nord Stream Pipeline, is to begin in November. It said of the 470-kilometer OPAL pipeline (Baltic Sea Pipeline Link running via Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Brandenburg and Saxony to the Czech border near Olbernhau in the Erzgebirge mountains), 260 kilometers have already been welded.
Nord Stream plans to pump gas to Western Europe, bypassing traditional transit countries such as Ukraine and Belarus blamed for previous disruptions in gas supplies to the region in the past. Two pipelines, each with a capacity of 27.5 billion cubic meters a year, will run from the Russian city of Vyborg near the Finnish border to the German port of Greifswald. Nord Stream AG has changed the originally proposed route of the pipeline to ease environmental concerns from the Baltic nations. The final route goes through the territorial waters and exclusive economic zones of Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Germany, avoiding Poland and the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
