The pipeline, which is thus growing at up to 24 meters per hour, is pulled ashore with the aid of a heavy-duty draw winch mounted on land. The winch itself weighs 100 tonnes and in this project, it is working with its maximum traction force of around 500 tonnes.
This is also necessary in order to pull ashore the pipeline string, which is now around 1,000mt long and weighs around 2,000 tonnes.
From fall 2011, natural gas from the Nord Stream Pipeline will flow into the transfer station which is currently being built. There, it will first be purified and preheated to the right temperature. The quality, quantity and pressure of the natural gas will then be measured.
In order to then transport it southward through the 470km long Baltic Sea Pipeline Link (OPAL) via Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Brandenburg and Saxony to the Czech border near Olbernhau in the Erzgebirge mountains, it will be recompressed to as much as 100 bar after half of the total route south of Berlin.
The construction of the building and the boiler house for the natural gas transfer station is currently in preparation. Construction of the high-pressure systems in the station, which in future will guarantee transport of up to 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas from the Nord Stream Pipeline, is to begin in November 2010.
Construction work on OPAL has already been underway since September 2009: between Lubmin and the Erzgebirge mountains. Of the 470km pipeline, 260km have already been welded. By summer, over half of the line will already have been laid in the ground. Already now, 160km have been laid.
In addition to OPAL, construction of the North European Gas Pipeline (NEL) is also planned. This is to run from the Nord Stream Pipeline landing point, past Schwerin and Hamburg, to the Rehden gas storage facility in Lower Saxony, thus connecting the Nord Stream to the European pipeline network, just like OPAL.
