Gazprom/Eni Complete Sub Water Pipeline Section

Gazprom has said that it completed laying 800 kilometers of pipelines under the Black Sea as the world's largest natural gas producer and Italy's Eni SpA build a link to sell the fuel to Turkey starting in October.

Gazprom and Europe's fourth largest oil group, are building the $3.3 billion pipeline to ship as much as sixteen billion cubic meters of gas a year to Turkey, more than it consumed in 2000. They won $1.76 billion in loan guarantees from Italian export import agency SACE and Japan's MITI and JBIC to fund the project.

Eni and Gazprom are competing against Azerbaijan and Iran to supply gas to Turkey, whose use of the fuel jumped by forty three percent from 1998 to 2000. In January Gazprom raised concerns it might not start supplies this year as Italy's Ilva SpA was late supplying pipes needed to build the pipeline.

"The marine stretch has connected the compressor station Beregovaya near the city of Dzhubga on the Russian coast with the compressor station in the vicinity of the city of Samsun on the Turkish side,” Gazprom said in a statement e-mailed to news agencies.

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&to=http://www.gazprom.ru/eng/default.htm' target=_blank>GAZPROM

&to=http://www.eni.it/english/home.html' target=_blank>Eni SpA