“The second pipeline has been laid. It’s up to the Russians whether there will a delay in the start of gas flow,” a Botas official told PipeWire recently.
The 1200-km long pipeline, known as the controversial Blue Stream project to carry an eventual 16Bcum of gas to Turkey annually, runs from Izobilnoye near Krasnodar in southern Russia to Turkey’s capital of Ankara. The undersea section of the pipeline, the deepest pipelaying work ever carried out in the world, at a depth of up to 2,150m, links Dzhubga in Russia and Samsun on Turkey’s Black Sea coast.
Gas deliveries were scheduled to start in October, 2001, but the project has been delayed.