OAO Gazprom (GAZP.RS) Tuesday said Nederlandse
Gasunie N.V. would join the Nord Stream pipeline project in a deal that
could give the Russian gas monopoly a bigger role in the European
market.
Gasunie agreed to take a 9% stake in the Gazprom-led Nord
Stream consortium. It will get the shares from German energy companies
E.ON Ruhrgas AG (EOA.XE) and Wintershall AG, a unit of BASF (BASFY),
whose holdings will fall to 20% each from the current 24.5%.
As part of the long-expected deal, state-controlled Gazprom
has received an option for 9% of Gasunie's BBL pipeline project, which
links the Netherlands and U.K. It will also get access to Gasunie's
transport capacity.
"This project is of great importance for European security
of supply, especially because domestic production in Europe is
declining, while demand for gas as the cleanest fossil fuel is very
robust," said Gasunie's Chief Executive Marcel Kramer.
He signed Tuesday's deal, along with his Gazprom counterpart
Alexei Miller, in the presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin and
Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, who is in Moscow on a
two-day visit.
Gazprom owns a 51% stake in the Nord Stream project, which
will eventually deliver up to 55 billion cubic meters of gas each year
to companies and households in the European Union.
The development, which will run from Vyborg to Germany's
Baltic coast near Greifswald, envisages construction of two parallel
pipes, the first of which will have an annual capacity of 27.5 billion
cubic meters and should come online in 2010.
However, Nord Stream's technical director Sergei Serdukov
said Tuesday that the first gas deliveries would now take place two
months later than initially planned, on Nov. 30, 2010, due to delays in
getting construction approvals from countries in the Baltic region, the
Interfax news agency reported.
That news follows comments made last week by Sweden's
Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren, who said the consortium must
draft alternate routes that skirt environmentally vulnerable Swedish
areas of the Baltic Sea.
Nord Stream said at the time that it was fully committed to
preserving the ecosystem of the Baltic Sea and that it was still in the
process of optimizing the pipeline's route through Swedish waters.
Consortium Web site: http://www.nord-stream.com