Gazprom Completes Phase One of Southern Corridor Documents

Russian Gazprom has completed the  project documents for the first phase of the Southern Corridor gas transport system (GTS) and has submitted these documents to the relevant state body.

The documents will now be reviewed by Glavgosekspertiza, the State Expert Review Board.

The completion of these documents brings Gazprom inline with a revised schedule for the South Stream project ordered by former Russian Prime Minister and recently elected Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Last year, President Putin instructed Gazprom to speed up the construction of South Stream to December of this year. Construction of the first phase of the Southern Corridor GTS is expected to be completed 2015 and will run parallel to the first phase of the South Stream pipeline project.

The Southern Corridor GTS is designed to feed gas into the South Stream pipeline.

The initial phase of the Southern Corridor GTS will begin with the building of an 834-kilometre linepipe between the Pisarevka compressor station (CS) in the Voronezh Oblast and the Russkaya CS in the Krasnodar Krai.

During this phase, a 57-kilometre interconnector from the Kubanskaya CS to the Korenovskaya CS will also be built.

The company said the submission of the documents represented a "milestone" for both projects.

"Timely submission of the documents to Russian Glavgosekspertiza is a crucial milestone in Gazprom's stagewise activities aimed at synchronized construction of the two interrelated gas transmission systems," a statement from Gazprom said.