The goal of the Blue Stream project is to provide uninterrupted and increasing deliveries of Russian natural gas to Turkey. Current predictions suggest that the general consumption of gas imported from Russia by Turkey will increase in the foreseeable future, and by 2015 could attain 30 to 40 billion cubic metres per year.
The international legal base for this project's implementation is the Agreement between the Governments of the Russian Federation and the Turkish Republic on Cooperation in the Energy Sector and the Agreement on Deliveries of Russian Natural Gas to Turkey Across the Black Sea. These agreements were signed in Ankara on December 15, 1997. According to the latter agreement, Russia will deliver an additional 16 billion cubic metres of gas per year over the next 25 years. The agreement has been ratified by both parties. The intergovernmental protocol signed in 1999 stipulated that both governments would apply a preferential tax regime to the Blue Stream project.
The pipeline's total length is 1213 kilometres. 373 kilometres are on Russian territory, 396 kilometres cross under the Black Sea and 444 kilometres are on Turkish territory. It is the deepest underwater pipeline in the world. In some areas it will be up to 2,200 metres underwater and this distance is a third deeper than other underwater pipelines.
The total cost of the Blue Stream project is 3,2 billion USD. From this 1,76 billion USD have been provided by Japanese, Italian and British creditors.
Gazprom's main partners in the project are the Italian energy group ENI (Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi) and its branch that specializes in the gas sector, Snam Rete Gas. The result of this cooperation between partners was a contract to build the offshore section of the gas pipeline. Saipem (Italy) and the Blue Stream Pipeline Company, a joint venture registered in the Netherlands, were to build and operate a section of the pipeline. In October 1999 the general contractor Saipem awarded a turnkey contract for developing, delivering equipment and constructing the offshore section of the gas pipeline to the Blue Stream Pipeline Company.
There are many unique aspects – underwater depth, working pressure, thickness of the pipeline's walls, difficult engineering and construction conditions etc.—associated with developing and operating the main Russia-Turkey gas pipeline, a pipeline unparalleled in the world. Gazprom developed various measures for maintaining the high quality and ecological security of the gas pipeline during the various stages of the project's implementation. Ecological experts have examined all aspects of Blue Stream.
Gazprom built the overland part of the gas transit system in Russia, and Botas did so in Turkey, and this was completed in 2002.
On December 30, 2002 a protocol on putting the Blue Stream project starting complex into operation was signed at the Durusu terminal in Turkey. The starting complex's capacity was 4 billion cubic meters per year. Commercial deliveries of natural gas to Turkey through the new gas pipeline started on February 20, 2003. By March 2003 193 million cubic metres of gas had been delivered.
On March 12, 2003 the Turkish party unilaterally halted natural gas imports and held that deliveries could continue only after resolving the issue of reducing prices of Russian gas delivered to Turkey according to all operating contracts. In July 2003 negotiations between Gazprom's representatives, the management of the Turkish Power Ministry and the company Botas resulted in an agreement to renew gas deliveries as of August 1, 2003 and to continue consultations to settle outstanding disagreements without going to arbitration. In November 2003 in Ankara, Gazprom and Gazexport signed documents with the Turkish party in which they settled all outstanding questions on prices and the preferential tax regime for participants in the project on Turkish territory according to the intergovernmental protocol signed in 1999.
In 2004 more than 3,2 billion cubic metres of gas were delivered through the pipeline to Turkey. Over the first ten months of 2005, 3,7 billion cubic metres were delivered.
On November 3, 2005 near Gelendzhik in the Krasnodarsky Region the first units of Beregovaia compressor station was put into operation. Already today this means it is technically possible for the Blue Stream gas pipeline to attain its maximum capacity of 16 billion cubic metres of gas per year (planned for 2010).