Four days before the official start of construction, workers began laying the first piece of pipe for the Nord Stream gas pipeline that is to connect Germany and Russia.

The pipe laid under the Baltic Sea is the start of a 1,220 kilometer (760-mile) supply line for natural gas. The official ceremony is set for April 9 in the city of Vyborg, on the Russian coast. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and former German Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder are to be in attendance.

As chairman of the Nord Stream consortium shareholders' committee, a post he took after leaving office in 2005, Schroeder played a significant role in convincing Baltic countries that the project was a good thing.

The pipe crosses through the territorial waters of Russia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Germany before surfacing near the northeast German town of Griefswald. Russian energy giant Gazprom is leading the project, with German companies E.ON, Ruhrgas, and BASF/Wintershall also involved.

Costs and benefits

The 7.4-billion-euro ($10 billion) project is to serve the European Union's growing need for energy sources, eventually carrying 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year. Russia, in exchange, gets to cash in on it.

When Nord Stream is completed at the end of 2011, it is hoped that it will help meet an EU demand for gas that is predicted to more than double by 2030, from 200 billion cubic meters to 516 billion meters.

It could also help avoid energy crises like the one that cut off millions of households in eastern Europe in January 2009, when Russia turned off the tap on deliveries during a fee dispute with Ukraine, a major gas transit country.

But not everyone is happy about the pipeline. German environmental groups like BUND and the World Wildlife Fund have taken legal action in an attempt to prevent Nord Stream from building an offshore section of the pipeline on top of the seabed. They say putting the line underneath would pose fewer dangers to area wildlife.

Nord Stream has already made some concessions to environmental concerns, including a later date for starting work in herring breeding areas. Company spokesman Steffen Ebbert told the Deutsche Presse Agentur that underwater construction would not start until May 15.

svs/AFP/AP/dpa
Editor: Chuck Penfold