White Stream Gas Pipeline

This article is part of the Global Fossil Infrastructure Tracker, a project of Global Energy Monitor.

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White Stream Gas Pipeline (also known as Georgia-Ukraine–EU Gas Pipeline) is a proposed natural gas pipeline which is planned to cross the Black Sea from Georgia to Romania. As of January 2023 is it considered shelved.

Location

The White Stream pipeline would branch-off from the existing South Caucasus Gas Pipeline (SCP) at a location south-west of Borjomi in Georgia. From there the pipeline would run west to a new compressor station on the Georgian Black Sea coast where the gas would be taken across the Black Sea to Constanta in Romania.

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Project Details

• Operator: White Stream Company Limited
• Owner: SNTGN Transgaz (50%), Itochu Corp (50%)
• Parent Company: SNTGN Transgaz, Itochu Corp
• Proposed capacity: 32 billion cubic meters per year
• Length: 1,238 km / 777 miles
• Diameter: 31, 41 inches
• Status: Shelved
• Start Year: 2024
• Cost: Estimated at €4.5 billion (US$5.3 billion)
• Financing: €1,871,725 grant from the EU's Connecting Europe Facility
• Associated infrastructure: Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline

Background

Original proposals for the project date back to at least 2010 when the project was presented as "a Priority Project of the EU and integral component of the Southern Gas Corridor."

The undersea pipeline would be part of a much larger European energy project called the Southern Corridor and would transport Turkmen gas via the second string of the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline (TCP) directly to Romania and other EU Member States. The gas would originate from Turkmenistan; travel across the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan; be transmitted to Georgia’s Black Sea coast through the expanded South Caucasus Gas Pipeline (SCP) in Georgia; enter the undersea White Stream pipeline and be received in the EU at Romania's Constanta LNG Terminal. From there, the gas can flow through existing infrastructure in Ukraine, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to Central and Northern European countries. The pipeline, under the Black Sea, would feed the BRUA Gas Pipeline, the Bulgaria-Romania-Hungary-Austria gas pipeline.

The project was originally scheduled to begin operations in 2018 and would initially operate at 8 bcm a year, while possibly expanding to 16 and ultimately 32 bcm a year. According to the "Plan of Work" on the WHITE STREAM LTD website, the final environmental impact statement is expected within 2020 and installation completed before 2023. An Energy Community report, released in March 2020, summarizing European Union Projects of Common Interest (PCI) states a Planned Date of Commissioning for the project of 2024. In 2019, the Japanese trading house Itochu and Transgaz signed an agreement to develop White Stream. IJGlobal reports that Romgaz was expected, as of July 30, 2019, to sign as well, however, this has not taken place as of August 2021.

In January 2021, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan signed a landmark agreement to jointly develop a long-disputed Caspian gas field (named "Kepez" or "Sardar", renamed in 2021 to "Dostlug/Dostluk"). This marks an important step towards further agreements which may include developments related to this pipeline. According to some analysts, this agreement removes the last obstacle to the construction of the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline, which may provide gas to the White Stream gas pipeline.

In December 2022, the leaders of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Romania and Hungary signed an agreement on the construction of an electric cable running under the Black Sea to carry green Azeri energy from planned Caspian Sea windfarms to Europe, which might become an alternative project to the White Stream Gas Pipeline.

As of August 2023, there have not been any developments in the implementation of the project. The project seems to be shelved because of an array of political, economic, and technical problems.

Financing

As White Stream is part of the PCI-listed Trans-Caspian Pipeline, it has qualified for a Connecting Europe Facility grant of €1,871,725 for pre-FEED, reconnaissance surveys and strategic and economic evaluations. This was awarded in 2017 to the then Estonia-based W-Stream Caspian Pipeline Company OÜ.

The project's European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas Ten Year Network Development Plan code is TRA-N-053 and its energy community project code GAS_19. However, it was not featured in ENTSOG's 2022 TYNDP as of June, 2022.