14.01.09

The Russian Gazprom Concern is planning to build the biggest gas storage in Western Europe, designed to deal with critical situations. It is to be constructed in the northern part of Germany. The Weekly Focus reports that Gazprom officials had already discussed this project at the FRG Ministry of Economics and New Technologies.

According to this magazine, the storage will be built near the city of Hinrichshagen (Meklenburg-Upper Pomerania Federal Land). A layer of porous sandstone was found there at a depth of about seven hundred metres, into which gas can be pumped. The sandstone stratum, which has an area of more than fifty square kilometres, is enveloped in a thick layer of clay, which guarantees its leakproofness. Estimates indicate that this storage could contain up to ten billion cubic metres of natural gas. Klaus Bergschnaider, an official of the "Gazprom Germania", a Gazprom daughter firm in Germany, said that some of the gas, pumped into the storage, could be placed under the control of the FRG government to serve as a strategic reserve to deal with critical situations alike the one with petroleum. Today, the Federal Republic has no state reserves of natural gas. The strategic reserves of petroleum and oil products can satisfy the country's requirements for only ninety days.

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Source: Itar-Tass