Gazprom Laying TurkStream 2 'Secretly': Press
Russian gas giant Gazprom has started laying the second thread of the Turkish Stream natural gas pipeline, Vedomosti business daily reported July 19, quoting a counteragent of Gazprom’s contractor and a government official, although Gazprom said it is still building the first thread.
Sources told the business daily that about 20–25 km of the second pipeline have been laid on the bottom of the Black Sea. Kommersant said that pipe laying ship Audacia of Allseas company is laying the pipeline. Marinetraffic.com Web site says that the ship is close to the Mali Utrish village and is moving at a speed of 0.10–0.15 knots on the route of the first thread of the Turkish Stream, which corresponds to the speed of laying a pipe.
Allseas data show that Audacia’s carrying capacity amounts to 14,000 metric tons of pipes. Kommersant said that ships Highland Navigator and Baccara are replenishing the Audacia’s pipe stocks. Marinetraffic.com showed the two ships made two voyages from the Russian port of Anapa to the Audacia early this week. Bulgarian cargo truck Eudoxia with a load of pipes also arrived at Anapa, the business daily said.
An Allseas representative told Kommersant that the company has constructed 100 km of the pipeline and did not specify whether construction of the second thread was launched. A Gazprom representative said that Audacia is carrying out technical works, but did not elaborate. Gazprom said in a statement that the company is focused on constructing the first thread.
The pipeline will consist of two branches with a capacity of 15.75bn m³/yr each. One of them, to be finished in 2018, is to supply gas to Turkey, another one is to transit gas to the European countries through Turkey and is to be finished in 2019. Allseas is laying the first thread, using the world's biggest such vessel, Pioneering Spirit. Its website describes the Audacia as a vessel, optimised for the execution of small- to large-diameter pipeline projects of any length in all water depths.
According to Russian gas analyst Tatiana Mitrova of the Skolkovo business school, one explanation could be that Gazprom is making the most of the time it has before tough US sanctions are imposed on Russian gas export projects – something that the EU is trying to resist. She told Vedomosti that Russia did not have the technology necessary for deepwater pipelaying such as TurkStream.
Azerbaijan desk