March 2014, Vol. 241 No. 3

Projects

Pipe Ordered For South Streams Offshore Section

The South Stream Transport B.V. headquarters in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, recently signed contacts for the supply of 75,000, 48-inch pipes for the first of South Stream’s offshore section.

The pipes will be supplied by German EUROPIPE (50% of the entire volume), United Metallurgical Company (35%) and Severstal (15%). The total value of the contracts is EUR 1 billion.

Contracts were signed before the European Union paused talks on the pipeline in response to the developing troubles between Russia and Ukraine.

South Stream’s offshore section is made up of four lines of 931-km each, with a diameter of 813 mm and wall thickness of 39 mm. The pipe, made of X65 steel, is designed for an extreme operating pressure of 28.45 MPa and will be used in the offshore section construction.

Once the required amount of pipes is stockpiled at temporary bases on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria, South Stream’s offshore section construction will start in autumn.

South Stream is a global infrastructure project aimed at constructing a gas pipeline with a capacity of 63 Bcm across the Black Sea to Southern and Central Europe for the purpose of diversifying the natural gas export routes and eliminating transit risks. South Stream’s offshore section will run under the Black Sea from the Russkaya compressor station on the Russian coast to the Bulgarian coast. The total length of the Black Sea section will exceed 930 km and its maximum depth will be more than 2 km.

A 1,455-km onshore section will cross Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Slovenia. The gas pipeline will end at the Tarvisio gas metering station in Italy. Gas branches from the main pipeline route will be built to Croatia and to Republika Srpska.
The first gas is scheduled to be supplied via South Stream in late 2015.