There is little chance that Poland's demand for a change in the Nord Stream pipeline route will be met, the CEO of the Nord Stream AG consortium said in an interview with the Russian business daily Kommersant.
“This claim has no legal leg to stand on,” Nord Stream AG managing director Matthias Warnig said, adding that Poland would first have to produce sufficient evidence to show the need for the pipe to go deeper.
The Nord Stream pipeline is designed to pump Russian gas to Western Europe, bypassing traditional transit countries such as Ukraine and Belarus blamed for previous disruptions in gas supplies to the region.
Two pipelines, each with a capacity of 27.5 billion cubic meters a year, will run from the Russian city of Vyborg near the Finnish border to the German port of Greifswald.
Nord Stream AG has changed the originally proposed route of the pipeline to ease environmental concerns from the Baltic states. The final route goes through the territorial waters and exclusive economic zones of Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Germany, avoiding the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Near the port of Szczecin, however, the pipeline is to cross a Polish water canal, passing 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) under it, which is in line with European standards.
Poland has requested the European Commission to order the participants in the project to reroute the pipeline, citing its plans to deepen its 13.5-meter (44.3-feet) channel to 15 meters to allow the navigation of larger ships.
MOSCOW, September 21 (RIA Novosti)
