On 16 September, Alexey Miller, JSC Gazprom’s Management Committee Chairman signed an Order to shift over to executing an investment stage of the North-European gas pipeline (NEGP) project implementation.

In accordance with the updated business plan, annual gas exports via NEGP are projected at up to 55 bcm.

Alexander Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of Gazprom’s Management Committee & Gazexport’s Director General was entrusted with coordinating the project execution by an international consortium of companies.

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The North-European gas pipeline (NEGP) will mark a qualitatively new phase of cooperation with European gas customers, for the first time in history carrying Russian natural gas directly to Europe without the transiting countries’ involvement. NEGP will link the Russian coast of the Baltic Sea near the town of Vyborg with the German coast of the Baltic in the vicinity of Greifswald. With the Baltic seabed already undergone preliminary survey, the pipeline route will be specified based on a comprehensive feasibility study. The pipeline length will surpass 1,200 km.

On 8 September, JSC Gazprom, BASF AG and E.ON AG signed an in-principle Agreement on the North-European gas pipeline construction. Under the Agreement, the partners are intent on creating the German-Russian joint venture North European Gas Pipeline Company to be 51 percent owned by Gazprom and 24.5 percent owned by BASF and E.ON each. Over the nearest months, the parties will seal detailed contracts on the NEGP project execution.

Gazprom will launch the construction of the onshore Gryazovets-Vyborg section in the autumn of 2005 already. So far, a big scope of work has been performed to study the roughly 917-km-long onshore section of NEGP in Russia.

The NEGP commissioning is slated for 2010. The first stage of the project implementation will see the construction of an about 27.5 bcm/y line. At a subsequent stage, the NEGP throughput will double to 55 bcm/y. Total investments needed for the two-line (offshore section construction) NEGP project execution will exceed EUR 4 bln.

DIVISION OF RELATIONS WITH MASS MEDIA