Estonia will not allow the construction of the Nord Stream gas pipeline to go ahead in its economic waters, Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet said on September 20. "We decided long ago that we would say 'no' to this construction," Paet said in an interview on Estonian television. "There have never been disagreements on this issue in Estonia - we will never allow the construction of this pipeline in our economic waters in any case," Paet said.
"Nord Stream is evidently not needed, because in four or five years Russia will no longer be a gas exporter. With its rapidly thinning reserves of gas, Russia won't even be able to meet its own domestic demand. Or are we to suppose that Russia will export its gas and leave its own people without energy?" Estonian President Toomas Ilves said in an interview with the newspaper Postimees two weeks ago.
Nord Stream is planned to carry natural gas between Vyborg, Russia, and Greifswald, Germany, through a pipeline across the Baltic Sea bed. It is a controversial project that has met with opposition from Baltic states and from transit countries and the final route of the project has yet to be defined.
Nord Stream originally planned to lay the pipeline in Finland's exclusive economic zone, but surveying revealed to seabed to be restrictively deep and uneven. This led to Nord Stream asking the Estonian government for permission to assess the suitability of the Baltic Sea bed in Estonian waters on May 31.
"Taking into account the Estonian republic's sovereignty in its territorial waters and state interests in Estonia's economic zone, the government has decided not to allow Nord Stream to conduct exploration work," the government's press service told Interfax. Among the motives for the government's decision were concerns that the exploration work would disclose information on the volume of Estonia's natural resources and their potential utilisation.
Estonia's decision will, however, mean that the gas pipeline will have to go through Finnish waters, said Nord Stream spokesman Jens Muller said. "There's one route and this is what we'll have," Muller told Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa). The company had wanted to research Estonian waters based on the Finnish request to consider a more southerly route to minimize the environmental impact of the pipeline, he said.
Estonian waters are sandier and more even than Finnish waters, Finnish authorities said at the time.
Via|New Europe News
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