In early December, the focus of the Russian and the foreign business community and the media was aimed at the groundbreaking ceremony for the offshore section of the South Stream pipeline, which was attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The complex, multi-stakeholder negotiation phase is over, and all the necessary intergovernmental agreements and investment decisions are now successfully signed.

“Today we started the practical realization of one of the largest infrastructural projects, the construction of the gas transportation system under the Black Sea. Along with Nord Stream, a similar pipeline system in the Baltic Sea, South Stream will create a pathway for the safe and unconditional supply of Russian gas to our major customers in Europe. In this case, in Southern Europe,” Putin said in Anapa, when the first joint was welded.

The scope of the project is difficult to underestimate. It really is an international venture. Even at the first stage of gas supply, Russia’s energy resources will be delivered to six different states. The construction of South Stream is expected to attract the best scientific resources. It will be conducted using the most modern technology and meet the requisite environmental standards, excluding the possibility of any environmental damage to the Black Sea.

The technical description of the pipeline project is astounding. The underwater section of South Stream will stretch along the bottom of the Black Sea from the Russkaya compressor station located near Anapa to the Bulgarian coast. The total length of the Black Sea segment will be more than 900 kilometers, and the maximum depth of the pipeline will be two kilometers. The estimated cost of the offshore section will be 10 billion euros. The total cost for the construction of South Stream will be 15.5 billion euros. The pipeline will have an impressive capacity of flow at 63 billion cubic meters of gas per year.

The laying of the pipeline along the bottom of the sea is expected to be an extremely complex task. Therefore, a specialized company South Stream Transport AG was created for the implementation of the marine area of the project. The share of Gazprom in that entity is 50 percent, the share of the Italian company ENI is 20 percent, and the shares of the German Wintershall Holding GmbH and the French EDF are at 15 percent each. The seabed section of the pipeline should be completed in 2014, and then the pipeline will cross through Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, and other European countries to complete its route in northern Italy in the town of Tarvisio. The first gas delivery is scheduled for late 2015.

But this is not the whole story. After the first line will be launched, two more lines will be put into operation within an interval of one year. Subsequent to the laying of the two additional lines, the fourth line will be commissioned. The completion of construction of the four threads is planned for the year 2017. South Stream will be operating at its full capacity of 63 billion cubic meters of gas a year no sooner than in 2019. With South Stream, the route for delivering Russian gas to Europe will exclude the so-called transit countries, particularly Ukraine, that has caused many conflicts with Russia over gas supplies.