NordStream Beats Nameplate Capacity

The Gazprom-operated NordStream 1 pipeline carried 58.5bn m³ to Europe in 2019, matching the volume in 2018.  “Thanks to uninterrupted operation throughout the year, the pipeline was loaded at a level comparable to that of 2018," it said.

The line's capacity is nominally 55bn m³, and the extra flow comes despite the reduction in flows through the Opal pipeline, following the September decision by the European Court in Luxembourg. More gas went through the smaller, North European Line, instead, improving the economics of both lines.

By January 1 of this year the line had carried 322.5bn m³ since it was commissioned in November 2011. The second line should also be operating by now, but delays with the Danish approval process meant that work was suspended over the summer. But all the other sections are complete. Then US sanctions forced Swiss pipeline-layer Allseas to terminate its work, which it announced December 21, leaving Russia to find another solution for laying the remaining kilometres through Danish waters.

President Vladimir Putin has said that the line will be finished without outside help, and the job could be done by this time next year. In press conference held with German Chancellor Angela Merkel January 11 and reported by Reuters, he said: “We, of course, would be able to finish construction on our own and without involving foreign partners.”

The costs are not understood to have risen for the five finance companies, despite the delay and whatever new arrangements prove necessary: one, the Anglo-Dutch major Shell, told NGW that the size of its financial contribution had been fixed in advance.