Eni CEO Paolo Scaroni sees gloomy future for South Stream

Paolo Scaroni, Chief Executive Officer of Italian oil company Eni, is pessimistic about the future of the South Stream offshore pipeline project.

According to La Repubblica, Scaroni said that the future of the project, which is expected to bring Russian gas to Europe via a subsea pipeline in the Black Sea, is fairly discouraging.

In a parliamentary hearing in Rome Scaroni said he saw the future of the South Stream gas pipeline as rather gloomy because the Russian-Ukrainian crisis will put at risk the necessary permissions of the EU.

“I don’t know if South Stream will ever be built,” a Sofia based news portal Novinite quoted Scaroni as saying.

Eni’s subsidiary Saipem earlier this week received a contract for the construction of the South Stream offshore pipeline, which, if built, will help Russia ship its gas to Europe without having to go through Ukraine.

The South Stream Offshore Pipeline will consist of four parallel gas pipelines each 931 kilometres long across the Black Sea, from Russia to Bulgaria. Each pipeline would be made up of over 75,000 individual pipes which are welded together on-board special pipe-laying vessels and then laid at depths of up to 2,200 metres. The agreements with Saipem cover the design and construction of line 1 and construction of the shallow water parts, shore crossings, landfall and associated facilities for all four pipelines.

Upon completion of the project, the pipeline would have  a maximum annual throughput of 63 billion cubic meters of natural gas.