Azernews.Az

MOSCOW – There is no chance that Poland's demand to participants in the Nord Stream project to change the route of the pipeline will be met, the CEO of the Nord Stream AG consortium said in an interview with the Russian business daily Kommersant.

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 nations. 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 Baltic 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 navigation of larger ships.

Matthias Warnig told Kommersant that Poland's demand was unlikely to be met since the water canal lies in German territorial waters.

The country would have first to provide solid arguments proving the necessity of deepening the canal, he said.

Second, to make the plan possible, Poland would have to remove several million tons of sand from the canal, but this would require a special permission, he added.