Greenpeace Russia and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) have appealed to Russia`s Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Sergei Donskoy with a request to postpone public hearings on assessment of the environmental impact of the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline construction, according to Kommersant.
Despite the fact that the information on the date and the place where the hearings were to be held appeared on the environment ministry`s website early April, it was incomplete, the environmentalists claim.
Officials scheduled public hearings for June 1 to be held in the town of Kingisepp (Leningrad region).
”The address will be specified later,” the ministry said, Kommersant reports.
”Until now, although only a week has remained until June 1, while no information on the venue and time when public hearings are to start has been published yet,” the report says.
Meanwhile, public hearings ”must be held in accordance with the provision on Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), which establishes the obligation to inform and involve the public at all stages of the EIA. Moreover, the information on the date and venue of the hearings shall be published no later than 30 days before their start in the official publications of the executive authorities` federal bodies,” the climate activists stressed in a letter to the minister.
Earlier, the ministry sent to the contact persons of the Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context located in Denmark, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Estonia, Sweden, and Finland the environmental impact assessment documents developed by Nord Stream 2 AG related to the construction of the offshore gas pipeline North Stream-2 – a new export gas pipeline from Russia to Europe via the Baltic Sea.
Earlier, Russia`s gas monopoly Gazprom and its European partners would allocate a short-term bridge loan worth EUR 6.65 billion for three years for the construction of the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline from Russia to Europe bypassing Ukraine. Nord Stream 2 AG will be involved in the project implementation.
Nord Stream 2 AG plans to build a 1,000 km long gas pipeline along the bottom of the Baltic Sea to the German city of Greifswald in order to minimize gas pumping through Ukraine. The route will pass along the existing Nord Stream gas pipeline. The project is estimated at EUR 9.5 billion.
