Pipe selected for South Stream's offshore section

South Stream's offshore section headquarters in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, hosted today the signing of contracts with regard to supply of 75 000 12 m pipes for the first line of South Stream's offshore section.

The pipes will be supplied by German EUROPIPE (50% of the whole volume), United Metallurgical Company (35%) and Severstal (15%). The total value of the contracts is approximately €1 billion.

South Stream's offshore section is made up of four lines of 931 km each, with a diameter of 613 mm and wall thickness 39 mm. The unparalleled pipes made of X65 steel designed for an extreme operating pressure of 28.45 MPa will be used during the offshore section construction.

Once the required amount of pipes is stockpiled at temporary bases on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria, South Stream's offshore section construction will start in Autumn 2014. The first offshore line is scheduled to start operation in December 2015.

"With a view to supply the offshore gas pipeline section with the required pipes of adequate quality, a bidding procedure for the pipe product suppliers was based on extremely stringent requirements to the pipe specification. It is worth mentioning that half of the bid was justly won by the Russian pipe plants that yet again confirmed their status of reliable high-quality pipe product suppliers.

EUROPIPE, United Metallurgical Company and Severstal will supply pipes for the world's most technically unrivalled offshore gas pipeline. It is a big responsibility for the manufacturers. The time has come to move on to the gas pipeline construction stage,” stated Oleg Aksyutin, Member of the Management Committee, Head of the Gas Transportation, Underground Storage and Utilisation Department of Gazprom; Chief Executive Officer of South Stream Transport BV.

Adapted from press release by Hannah Priestley-Eaton

Read the article online at: https://www.worldpipelines.com/business-news/30012014/pipe_selected_for_south_streams_offshore_section/