RusEnergy

Nov. 01, 2007 - Kommersant - Treading in Poland’s steps, Sweden has called for additional environmental assessment for alternative routes of Nord Stream off-shore gas pipeline. The effort will require roughly $30 million in addition and the analysts say that Sweden will probably shelve the project implementation for a few years. Sweden’s Minister for the Environment Andreas Carlgren announced yesterday that, in the Sweden’s economic zone of the Baltic Sea, the Nord Stream pipeline runs through the problem and risky areas, including Natura 2000 nature conservation area and the places of mines and chemical weapons’ disposal. To decide on the project, the minister said, the government needs a complete and high-grade report that would compare potential environmental aftereffects of this route to potential aftereffects of alternative directions. In substance, this statement of the top-ranked bureaucrat urges Nord Stream AG (Gazprom has 51 percent, BASF and E.ON own 24.5 percent each) to conduct additional environmental impact assessment for alternative routes. But the route of the pipeline has been adjusted already. Past summer, Nord Stream was moved from the challenged area of Poland’s economic zone. Poland, however, never stopped calling for the additional environmental assessment, counting on the Sweden’s support, which it actually got yesterday.