The Greenstream pipeline, part of the

Western Libyan Gas Project The Western Libyan Gas Project (WLGP) is a 50–50 joint venture between the Libyan National Oil Corporation (NOC) and the Italian company Eni which came online in October 2004. By July 2007, per year of natural gas was being exported from a proc ...

, is a

natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...

submarine

pipeline Pipeline may refer to: Electronics, computers and computing * Pipeline (computing), a chain of data-processing stages or a CPU optimization found on ** Instruction pipelining, a technique for implementing instruction-level parallelism within a s ...

running from western

Libya Libya (; ar, ليبيا, Lībiyā), officially the State of Libya ( ar, دولة ليبيا, Dawlat Lībiyā), is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to Egypt–Libya bo ...

to the island of

Sicily (man) it, Siciliana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Ethnicity , demographics1_footnotes = , demographi ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

History

The idea of natural gas from Libya to Italy originating from the 1970s. Feasibility studies were carried out in the 1980s and 1990s. Construction of the pipeline started in 2003. The pipeline's main contractor was

Saipem Saipem S.p.A. (Società Anonima Italiana Perforazioni E Montaggi lit. ''Drilling and Assembly Italian Public Limited Company'') is an Italian multinational oilfield services company and one of the largest in the world. Until 2016 it was a subsid ...

, that used for pipeline laying the

Castoro Sei The ''Castoro Sei'' (Italian for ''Beaver Six'') is a column stabilized semi-submersible pipelay vessel. She has an overall length of , a width of and an operating draught of . The ''Castoro Sei'' is equipped with 2 rotating gantry cranes ...

and Crawler vessels. The shore approach and landfall works were done by Boskalis Offshore. The supplies started on 1 October 2004 and the pipeline was inaugurated on 7 October 2004 by

Silvio Berlusconi Silvio Berlusconi ( ; ; born 29 September 1936) is an Italian media tycoon and politician who served as Prime Minister of Italy in four governments from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011. He was a member of the Chamber of Deputies ...

and

Muammar Gaddafi Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, . Due to the lack of standardization of transcribing written and regionally pronounced Arabic, Gaddafi's name has been romanized in various ways. A 1986 column by ''The Straight Dope'' lists 32 spellin ...

Technical features

The Greenstream pipeline is long and it runs from Mellitah in Libya to Gela, in

Sicily (man) it, Siciliana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Ethnicity , demographics1_footnotes = , demographi ...

, Italy. It is located in water depths exceeding . It includes also the Mellitah compressor station and the Gela reception terminal. The pipeline is supplied from the

Bahr Essalam Bahr may refer to: *Bahr, Iran, village in Bushehr Province, Iran * Bahr, village near Straßburg, now: Barr, Bas-Rhin, Alsace, France *Bahr, Netherlands, hamlet in Gelderland, Netherlands *Bahr (surname) *Bahr (toponymy), a component of Arabic pla ...

offshore field,

Bouri Field The Bouri Offshore Field is part of Block NC-41, which is located north of the Libyan coast in the Mediterranean Sea. It was first discovered in 1976 at a depth of and is estimated to contain in proven recoverable crude oil reserves and of ass ...

and Wafa field near

Algeria ) , image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Algiers , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , relig ...

n border, from Mellitah. The construction cost US$6.6 billion. The pipeline has a diameter of and an initial capacity of 8 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas per year. Later the capacity was increased to 11 bcm.

Ownership

The pipeline is constructed and owned by Agip Gas BV, a joint venture of the Italian energy company

Eni Eni S.p.A. () is an Italian multinational energy company headquartered in Rome. Considered one of the seven "supermajor" oil companies in the world, it has operations in 69 countries with a market capitalization of US$54.08 billion, as of 11 Ap ...

and the National Oil Corporation (NOC) of Libya.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Greenstream pipeline Energy infrastructure completed in 2004 Natural gas pipelines in Libya Natural gas pipelines in Italy Tripolitania Italy–Libya relations Pipelines under the Mediterranean Sea 2004 establishments in Italy 2004 establishments in Libya

History

Technical features

Ownership

See also

References

External links