Estonia wants to join North-European Gas Pipeline

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Foreign ministers of Estonia and Finland Urmas Paet and Erkki Tuomioja discussed the Baltic Conector gas pipeline project (Estonia -Finland) on the bottom of the Gulf of Finland. The talks took place on December 19 in Tallinn, the Estonian foreign ministry press office told REGNUM. As Paet said at a news conference on the results of the talks, the sides continued to analyze the economic self-repayment of the project and its possible route. By the way, they do not rule out that its middle section can be joined to the North-European Gas Pipeline. Tuomioja and Paet stressed that Germany gave its consent to give the whole information on the construction works of the pipeline and shared the concern of Estonia and Finland about the future ecologic situation in the Baltic Sea basin.

The Baltic Conector project on connecting gas pipelines of West Europe, Poland, Baltic countries and Finland was supported by the European Union five years ago and is partially financed from the European funds. The Finnish Gas Consortium Soome Gasum has conducted exploring a route for the future gas pipeline, its results will be made public in fall of 2006 together with assessments and estimates. The project is estimated at over 80 million euro. After Russia and Germany decided to lay the North-European gas pipeline, exploring of the Baltic Conector route was speeded up.