Former German Chancellor To Head Controversial Pipeline

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was appointed chairman of the shareholders committee of the North European Gas Pipeline Company on Thursday, a Russian-German consortium building a pipeline to link Russia's reserves with German and other European markets.

Alexei Miller, chairman of Russian gas giant Gazprom, which has a 51-percent stake in the consortium, announced the appointment at a press conference in Moscow, the Interfax news agency reported. German companies BASF and E.ON each have a 24.5-percent stake.

The pipeline company was established in November 2005 under an agreement between Russian gas giant Gazprom, E.ON and BASF to build a gas pipeline on the Baltic seabed that will reach not only Germany but also Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Britain, eventually.

The pipeline is expected to have an annual capacity to pump 55 billion cubic meters of Russian gas to Europe. Work on the pipeline began in December.

Russia is the world's largest natural gas producer and currently provides about a quarter of the gas consumed in the European Union, most of it sent through pipelines that cross Ukraine.