President Vladimir Putin on Friday launches construction of the South Stream pipeline that the Kremlin hopes will pump Russia 's natural gas to Europe while bypassing its unpredictable neighbor Ukraine .

Putin is scheduled to launch the pipeline at a ceremony outside the Black Sea city of Anapa with European partners of the Russian gas giant Gazprom in the project--Italys ENI, France's EDF and Germany's Wintershall.

The pipeline will flow underneath the Black Sea and then through the Balkans to supply Gazproms big European clients with Russian gas and ensure the security of its energy exports.

Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Ivanov said last week that South Stream and a similar project in the Baltic, Nord Stream, would make Russian deliveries stable and completely independent of any outside factor, including transit.

But the project, which plans to start pumping gas from 2015, has also faced criticism for taking the ambitious option of building an entirely new pipeline rather than upgrading existing infrastructure in Ukraine .

The European Union is also backing a rival pipeline project called Nabucco, which plans to bring Caspian gas to Europe . It is regarded with the greatest of suspicion by Russia .

Russia and its EU clients are keen to avoid a repeat of the winter of 2009 when a bitter spat between Moscow and Kiev over gas prices caused European clients to be cut off from Russian gas for a fortnight.

The project is of huge personal importance for Putin and in a sign of his serious intent he ordered Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller to bring the launch date forward to 2012 from 2013.

Mr. Miller has said that the total cost of the pipeline was estimated at more than $21.5 billion.

He said Russia would be paying around 7.5 billion euros ($9.8 billion) of the pipeline's construction given that state-controlled Gazprom has a 50% share in the project.

South Stream is being built by a consortium owned 50% by Gazprom, 20% by ENI, 15% by EDF and 15% by Wintershall. Russian gas deliveries currently represent a quarter of the European Union's total gas needs.

Maria van der Hoeven, executive director of the International Energy Agency, praised Russia for undertaking the project in a fast-changing environment.

"Investing in a major new infrastructure project on the promise of a brighter future for European gas could be seen as a brave choice," she told reporters in Russia late Thursday.

"South Stream represents many things to many people, but it would also be a vote of confidence in the future of European gas."

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