Last section of NEL nearing completion

Kassel. After six months of construction, work on the just over 35 km long final section of the North European Gas Pipeline (NEL) between Harmstorf and Bütlingen in the district of Harburg will soon be completed. NEL Gastransport GmbH is now issuing an invitation to tender for natural gas to fill the pipeline as of 10 October.

NEL is to be put into full operation effective November 1. The originally planned transport capacity of up to 20 billion cubic meters of gas per year will then be available.

Whereas Russian natural gas has been transported through large parts of NEL since October 2012, the final section had to be rerouted, which necessitated a procedure to gain approval for the change in planning. This was due to rulings by the Lower Saxony’s Higher Administrative Court in Lüneburg, which had upheld a number of petitions for summary proceedings against the original planning approval.

NEL runs from the landing station of the Baltic Sea pipeline Nord Stream in Lubmin near Greifswald over a length of 441 kilometers, past Schwerin and Hamburg to Rehden in Lower Saxony. Like OPAL, the pipeline link running to the Czech Republic, it connects Nord Stream with the European long-distance pipeline network. In that way, natural gas is transported from the large reservoirs in Russia directly to Germany and other European countries, such as the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, France and the UK.