Update on the Russian-German pipeline

Friday I posted that construction has begun on a gas pipeline from Russia to Germany.

The Russian energy giant Gazprom owns a 51 percent stake in the pipeline.

According to a Turkish Press article:

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in June that the pipeline to Greifswald would start operating in 2010 with a capacity of 27 billion cubic metres (954 billion feet) of gas a year. The cost of construction has been estimated at four billion euros (4.7 billion dollars).

Extensions to the pipeline are planned under the North Sea to Britain as well as to Sweden.

Gazprom's [chairman Alexi] Miller said the pipeline would be a key route for gas from the massive Yuzhno-Russkoye field in western Siberia that Gazprom is developing with BASF, as well as from the Shtokman field under the Barents Sea, for which Russia is still seeking a partner.

But Friday's ceremony could heighten anxieties over the project on the part of Poland and Lithuania.

These ex-communist members of the European Union worry that the pipeline could endanger the Baltic Sea's fragile ecology and that their gas supplies could be threatened if Russia were able to export directly to western Europe without crossing east European territory.

Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas told Bild newspaper earlier: "During the preparation of the project nobody asked our opinion even once. Everything was done behind our backs... I don't know who is trying to play around with us, Russia, or maybe Germany."