Russian Energy Minister: 170 km of TurkStream pipeline laid so far

Russian oil and gas company Gazprom has reportedly laid some 170 kilometers of the Turksih Stream, also known as TurkStream, pipeline in the Black Sea.

The operational update was shared by the Russian Energy minister Alexander Novak during his visit in Izmir, Turkey, last week.

“In May, the construction of the offshore section of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline began near the Russian Black Sea coast. As of today, about 170 km of the gas pipeline have been laid, while the length of the offshore section of the project will be about 940 km,” Novak said.

As previously reported by Offshore Energy Today, the Allseas Audacia pipelayer had laid the the shallow water section of the first string of the pipeline in May, after which the Allseas-owned Pioneering Spirit, the world’s largest pipelay and construction vessel, took over late in June, to carry out the deepwater pipelaying operations at the first string of the project.

The start of the deepwater operations was symbolically launched by Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia.

The twin pipelines of the Turkish Stream project will enter the water near Anapa, on the Russian coast, and come ashore on the Turkish coast some 100 kilometers west of Istanbul, near the village of Kiyikoy.

Each string of TurkStream will have the throughput capacity of 15.75 billion cubic meters of gas per year.

To remind, Russia’s and Turkey’s energy ministers signed an agreement to go ahead with construction of the pipeline back in October 2016.

This marked the resumption of works on the TurkStream pipeline project which was suspended after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane in 2015.

Turkey then said the warplane had violated its airspace. The incident had led to the cooling of relations between the two countries, however, the relations have improved following the Turkish president’s apology to Russia for the downing of the plane.

Offshore Energy Today Staff