Gazprom-led Nord Stream 2 has decided to withdraw its application for the 2017 route through Danish territorial waters south of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea, which had been under approval process for the last two years. The project company will maintain its applications for two other alternative routes, one north-west of Bornholm submitted in August 2018 and one south-east of Bornholm submitted in May 2019. Both of these routes are within the Danish exclusive economic zone, outside of Danish territorial waters: consequently, they would not require the approval from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and would be only subject to an open handling process in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The €9.5bn (US$11bn) Nord Stream 2 project is developed by Gazprom (50%), Uniper, Shell, OMV, Wintershall and Engie (10% each) and is aimed at doubling the throughput of the current Nord Stream route between Vyborg (Russia) and Greifswald (Germany), from 55 bcm/year to 110 bcm/year. The 1,230-km long pipeline project has been approved in Finland, Sweden, Germany and Russia and is already under construction in Germany with the aim to flow first gas by the end of 2019. Denmark is the sole country that has not yet issued a construction permit.