The second line of Nord Stream 2 is filled with gas and ready to begin operating, Alexey Miller, the head of Russia’s state-owned energy corporation Gazprom, said at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday.
The project’s operator, Nord Stream 2 AG, announced on its website that “as planned, and in line with the system design requirements, the string is filled with some 177 million m3 of so-called technical gas, reaching a pressure of 103 bar in the pipeline. This pressure is sufficient to start gas transportation in the future.”
The Nord Stream 2 project is still awaiting EU clearance to start gas deliveries to Europe. It consists of two pipelines designed to carry gas from the Siberian gas fields in Russia across the Baltic Sea to Germany. It has the capacity to supply a total of 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually.
The project has encountered numerous roadblocks along the way, however, including US sanctions, EU regulations, and opposition from some Eastern European nations.
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