Austrian energy company OMV has earmarked 44 million euro to finance the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the first quarter of 2019, the company said, according to TASS.
A year earlier, in the first quarter of 2018, OMV earmarked 81 million euro for the purpose. In all, the company allocated 600 million euro to finance the project by the end of 2018 since the beginning of its implementation. The total cost of building the pipeline is 9.5 billion euro. The share of each of the five European partners in financing the project is 10%. Therefore, OMV has already provided 644 million euro of 950 million.
The company will continue to finance its share in the project, it said.
The Nord Stream 2 project will consist of two gas pipeline strings with a total capacity of 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year from Russia’s coast across the Baltic Sea to Germany. The pipeline is expected to be commissioned before the end of 2019.
The pipeline will bypass transit countries, specifically, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, and other Eastern European and Baltic countries and will be laid across the territorial waters of five states, that is, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany.
The sole shareholder of Nord Stream 2 AG is Russia’s state-run gas giant Gazprom. Gazprom’s European partners – Wintershall, Uniper, OMV, Engie, and Royal Dutch Shell – will finance 50% of the project.
