South Stream Transport B.V. signed a contract with Swiss company Allseas Group S.A. in Amsterdam for construction of the first line of the offshore section of Turkish Stream with an option for construction of the second line, Gazprom said in a statement.
"Under the contract, Allseas must lay more than 900 km of pipes on the seafloor. To perform this operation, the company plans to use the world's largest construction vessel Pioneering Spirit. Allseas will start laying the first line in the second half of 2017," TASS cited the statement as saying.
The Turkish stream gas pipeline will run across the Black Sea to the European part of Turkey and to the border with Greece. The length of the offshore part will be about 910 km long. The length of Turkish onshore section will total 180 km. Each line will have an annual capacity of 15.75 bcm, with the first line reaching Turkey, and the second - South and South-East Europe. The project's total cost was estimated at 11.4 billion euro.
The deputy director of energy policy of the Institute of Energy and Finances, Alexey Belogoriev, speaking to Vestnik Kavkaza, said that laying of the offshore section of the Turkish Stream depends on the technical conditions and is likely to last for 10-11 months.
"The approximate term of commissioning of the first line into operation is December 2018," the expert suggested.
Answering the question about what gas will be sent through the Turkish Stream, the deputy director of energy policy of the Institute of Energy and Finances expressed the view that in fact it does not matter much, but it will be Gazprom's gas.
"Now it has a huge amount of spare capacities, therefore, I find it difficult to say from where it will be economically feasible to redirect them: it depends on the mining schedule. Maybe the Bovanenkovo oil and gas condensate field, maybe other fields," Alexey Belogoryev said.
