At a press conference in Ankara, Turkey on Monday evening, Russian president Vladimir Putin announced that the South Stream gas pipeline would not be built. The head of Russian energy giant Gazprom, Alexei Miller, confirmed the news, “That’s it. The project is over.” The €40 billion ($50 billion) pipeline was to have transported Russian gas from the Black Sea coast through Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary to Austria, bypassing Ukraine en route. Another pipeline would have supplied Italy via Greece. It was to have had an annual capacity of 63 billion cubic metres, one-tenth of Europe’s total gas demand. Gazprom has already invested €8 billion ($9.4 billion) in the project.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 22:00:00 +0000