Factbox: North European Gas Pipeline

* The $4.7 billion North European Gas Pipeline (NEGP) will connect the Baltic Sea shore near the Russian city of Vyborg with the Greifswald region on the German coast along the Baltic seabed

* The project is designed to create a direct route for natural gas deliveries from Russia to its biggest market in western Europe, bypassing transit countries (Ukraine, and Poland)

* The plan is to build two parallel gas pipeline legs, 750 miles each. The first stage envisages the construction of one leg with a capacity of 27.5 billion cu m, and the second one will double the NEGP capacity to 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year

* The first leg of the pipeline is set to come on-stream in 2010. Offshoots may then be built to link it with Russia's exclave in Europe, the Kaliningrad Region, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom

* The pipeline is set to pump gas from the giant Shtokman gas condensate deposit, a Barents Sea shelf in Russia's north, with estimated gas reserves of 3.2 trillion cu m., and possibly from other huge gas deposits in the north of Russia (Zapolyarnoye, Prirazlomnoye, Yuzhno-Russkoe, etc.)

* Under a basic agreement on building the North European Gas Pipeline signed by Russia's natural gas monopoly Gazprom, Germany's BASF AG and E.ON AG September 8, the parties intend to set up a Russian-German joint venture in which a 51% stake will belong to Gazprom, while BASF and E.ON will hold 24.5% stakes each