Gazprom and Italy's Eni have agreed to build the northern onshore branch of the South Stream gas pipeline before the southern section, which will be laid across the Adriatic sea to Italy, Eni chief Paolo Scaroni told a press conference.
The northern branch will cross Bulgaria, Serbia and Austria.
The sea section of the gas pipeline will run at the bottom of the Black Sea from the Russkaya compressor station along the Russian coast to Bulgaria’s coast. The Black Sea section of the pipeline will come to around 900 kilometers with maximum depth at over two kilometers. Design capacity comes to 63 billion cubic meters. Two possible routes have been considered for the non-land section from Bulgaria. One route would run northwest while the other would go southwest.
The gas transport system in Russia will likely be expanded so that gas supply to the South Stream pipeline is maintained in necessary volumes. This would include the construction of an additional 2,446 kilometers in pipeline sections and 10 compressor stations with total capacity of 1,473 MWt. This project has been designated as South Corridor and will be implemented in two stages until December 2019.
