January 7, 2008
Carl Mortished, World Business Editor
A landmark Gazprom pipeline project intended to bring vital new supplies of Siberian natural gas into Western Europe and, ultimately, Britain is suffering severe cost inflation and delays.
The first gas was expected to flow through Nord Stream by 2010, but completion and testing of the 746-mile (1,200km) pipeline, which runs the length of the Baltic Sea, has been delayed until 2011 and costs are rising fast.
Gerhard Schröder, the former German Chancellor who heads Nord Stream, has said that the cost could be several billion euros higher than the budgeted €5 billion (£3.7 billion). “We are talking €8 billion of investment here,” Mr Schröder said last month.