The operator, Nord Stream AG, is to lay the 1224-kilometer pipeline across the Baltic sea bottom from Vyborg to Greifswald. The first leg, with a capacity of 27.5 billion cubic meters a year, is to be commissioned in 2011, the second – in 2012. At the moment, 51 percent of the Nord Stream AG stock belongs to Gazprom, the German E.ON Ruhrgas and Wintershall hold 15.5 percent each and the Dutch Gasunie and French GdF Suez have 9 percent each.

Both German companies split their shares with “Gas de France Suez”. Experts point out that a deal to that effect took ten months to clinch because the French wanted the right of veto on strategically important decisions, which caused fierce opposition from the Germans. The German shareholders claimed that unlike the other signatories to the project, who had had to deal with the opposition in the face of Sweden, Poland, Lithuania and Estonia, France entered the project on far too easy terms and wanted too much under the circumstances. Eventually, France had to waive the demands of veto, and a memorandum on the French company’s participation in Nord Stream was signed in the presence of Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris in March 2010. An official agreement was signed in July. 

As for Nord Stream partnership in general, the chief of the ‘Brokercreditservice” analytical department Maxim Shein has this to say:

"Big projects are normally more political than economic, he says. An ambitious project of this kind, if joined by an EU country, has more chances to succeed. By joining the project at such an advanced stage, ‘Gas de France’ gives it to understand that we are all in the same boat and willing to cooperate."

Whatever the case, the “Nord Stream crew” is full and given a green light, said Voice of Russia.