Zeelink Pipe Marks Progress: OGE

Leading German gas grid operator Open Grid Europe said last week that a 215km ‘Zeelink’ pipeline project, its joint venture with Thyssengas, has cleared its regional planning assessment with four German local authorities in Cologne, Dusseldorf, Munster and the Ruhr all backing its development.

OGE said the Zeelink project will play a key role in the necessary transition from low-calorific to high-calorific gas in the region, as indigenous L-cal gas production declines in Netherlands and Germany. It would do so by enabling more H-cal gas such as from Russia and Norway, or regasified LNG imported at Belgium's Zeebrugge and France's Dunkirk LNG terminals, to enter the region. The planned 215km pipe will run from the Belgian/German border at Eynatten to Legden near Ahaus in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Construction is scheduled in 2019-20, with start up 1Q2021.

“Now that the regional planning assessment for Zeelink has been completed, an important milestone, we once again want to engage in an intensive dialogue with the public before the application for planning approval is filed in late summer 2017,” said project manager Franz-Josef Kissing on March 6.

Thyssengas CEO Axel Botzenhardt (Photo credit: the company)

Thyssengas CEO Axel Botzenhardt said September 2016 that investment in new pipeline infrastructure was needed in western Germany in order to enable “gas from as many sources as possible” to replace depleting Dutch gas production. He urged closer cooperation with Gazprom and its Nord Stream-2 project in that regard as, in his view, LNG cargo deliveries couldn’t always be relied on.

In eastern Germany, Gazprom-BASF joint gas grid operator Gascade is looking to develop a much more ambitious 485km 'Eugal' pipe tp link Nord Stream 2 to the Czech border, following the route of the existing Opal pipe. Gascade hopes the first of two twin Eugal pipes could flow gas by end 2019.

Mark Smedley