Following heated protests from shipping and fisheries interests, the Nord Stream company has proposed a new route for the planned offshore gas pipeline connecting Russia and Germany.
The re-directed section of the controversial 1,220 kilometre pipeline from Vyborg in the Bay of Finland to Greifswald on the Oder outlet will pass the Bornholm island south and east in the new plan. The earlier route north of the island was deemed unacceptable by both shipping stakeholders – for security reasons – and the fisheries industry, primarily in Denmark.
The new course of the pipeline past Bornholm will be through Danish and German territory/economic zones, and the Nord Stream venture, where the Russian Gazprom is a 51 per cent majority shareholder, will now have to submit Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) to those governments. Although Sweden is not directly involved, an earlier international convention gives her the right to express views on what those EIA’s should involve.
A similar process for the part of the pipeline that affects Swedish territory and economic zones is already underway. Although no decisions have been made yet on the application Nord Stream handed in to the Swedish government last spring, heavy criticism has been directed towards the company for presenting an allegedly insufficient EIA, not living up to requirements in international law.
The Swedish government has demanded that Nord Stream present alternative routes in the Baltic, while the political opposition, as well as Greenpeace, has claimed that conventions state that a land-based alternative also has to be described.
Greenpeace ocean campaigner Staffan Danielsson depicts the Baltic Sea as “cold, shallow, eutrophicated, overfished, with 90 million people on its shores – the Baltic Sea is enough industrialised as it is”.
The three Baltic States – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – and Poland have sought EU support for at least a study of the land-based alternative, an initiative Sweden has not sustained so far.
One important argument against the offshore route is that the whole Baltic Sea proper, except for a small part of Russian territory, has been classified as Particularly Sensitive Sea Area (PSSA) by the United Nations International Maritime Organisation (IMO). Strong fears have also been expressed that the laying out of the pipeline would stir up and spread heavy metals, as well as revive leftover chemical weapons on the sea bottom.