NEL (pipeline)

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Coordinates: 52 ° 37 '7.7 "  N , 8 ° 29" 46.7 "  E

NEL pipeline
Starting point of OPAL and NEL near Lubmin
Pipeline pipe, prepared for laying in the pipe trench, in the Bassum area
Laying of the pipeline south of Schwerin

The NEL , short for North European Gas Pipeline (previously North German gas pipeline ) is a natural gas - pipeline , the more than 440 kilometers from Lubmin on the Baltic coast in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern up to Rehden in Lower Saxony leads. In addition to the OPAL pipeline leading south, the NEL pipeline connects the Nord Stream Baltic Sea pipeline at its landing point in Lubmin near Greifswald with the existing supraregional pipeline system. It conducts natural gas, which flows via the Nord Stream pipeline from the large natural gas storage facilities in Russia directly into northern Germany, where it is stored and then or directly via the supraregional pipeline system to Germany and more western countries such as the Netherlands, Belgium and France as well as Great Britain to be headed. The NEL passes Schwerin , Hamburg and Bremen along its route .

The construction work for laying the pipeline began in March 2011, after only 15 months of construction it went into operation as planned on November 1, 2012, with the gas initially having a lower capacity via one due to complaints from residents in an area near Stelle and Winsen (Luhe) Diversion flowed. Since it was fully commercialized on November 1, 2013, more than 20 billion cubic meters of natural gas has been able to flow through the NEL into the German gas infrastructure.

Key figures

The pipeline was welded together with an average of 18 meters long, 2.23 centimeters thick and 15 tons heavy pipes with a diameter of 1.42 meters and laid in a trench with one meter of earth cover. The pressure in the natural gas pipeline is up to 100 bar; the annual capacity of the line is more than 20 billion cubic meters, which corresponds to about a fifth of the total German energy demand.

Operator and shareholder

The planned investments for the pipeline project amount to around one billion euros. NEL Gastransport GmbH has a 51% stake in the pipeline, Gasunie Deutschland Transport Services GmbH with 25.1% and Fluxys Deutschland GmbH with 23.9%. The management of the line is the responsibility of NEL Gastransport GmbH . It works together with GASCADE Gastransport GmbH , OPAL Gastransport GmbH & Co. KG and Gasunie Deutschland GmbH .

course

The NEL route has a total length of 440 kilometers, 240 kilometers through Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and 200 kilometers through Lower Saxony. The NEL runs from the landing point of the Nord Stream pipeline in Lubmin past Hamburg and ends halfway between Bremen and Osnabrück in Rehden near Diepholz , where the natural gas can be stored or fed into the existing natural gas pipeline network.

Pipeline archeology

The
gold hoard of Gessel discovered during construction

In Lower Saxony, the approximately 200-kilometer route was completely archaeologically examined. This pedological supervision of the construction project was largely financed by the operators of the pipeline according to the polluter pays principle . The coordination of the archaeological measures with up to 13 excavation teams and at times over 100 employees was carried out by the Lower Saxony State Office for Monument Preservation . From the end of 2010, ten months of hard prospecting began well in advance of the construction work . This meant a six-meter-wide search cut over a length of 50 km in the area of ​​suspected archaeological sites and in the vicinity of known sites. Archaeologists and excavation technicians accompanied the remaining 150 km of the route by observing the removal of the topsoil by a construction company's excavator over a width of 30 m . The systematic search on the investigation strip revealed a clear picture of the thousands of years old cultural landscape. Archaeologically, the pipeline construction meant a gain in several ways:

  • New excavations
  • Representative insight into the archaeological soil archive of Northern Germany
  • Assessment of the archaeological potential in certain areas

In total, the laying of the pipeline offered an archaeological investigation area of ​​7 km². It was the largest archeology project in Lower Saxony and one of the largest excavation projects in Europe.

The systematically conducted archaeological investigations on the pipeline route have so far led to 134 sites in Lower Saxony with around 12,500 archaeological findings , including around 100,000 ceramic shards from 12,000 years of cultural history in Lower Saxony, from the Stone Age to the modern age . Only about 10 percent of the archaeological sites discovered were previously known, although archaeologists based on many years of experience assumed a rate of 25 percent. The most important finds from pipeline construction were presented in 2013 and 2014 in the Lower Saxony State Museum in Hanover.

Among the finds were:

  • Sandstone retoucher with an engraving showing a headless female body with indicated legs and pubic area. The approximately 5 cm × 7 cm large stone was found near Bierden near Achim at a storage site for Stone Age groups of hunters and gatherers. The female figure was named as Venus von Bierden . The time of origin is not clear due to this rare type of find in northern Germany. The Mesolithic is assumed, penknife groups from the Upper Paleolithic could also come into question.
  • Late Bronze Age settlement near Eydelstedt with smaller farm buildings for storing agricultural products.
  • Late Bronze Age grave sites near Heiligenloh , whereby two graves represented by grave borders as long beds . At the site there were also younger settlement remains, such as posts and pits, from the Roman Empire .
  • Settlement from the pre-Roman Iron Age near Barnstorf with pits, trenches, fire pits and post holes from earlier buildings. Over 600 archaeological findings were found on an area of ​​around 8000 m². The place was apparently populated for a longer period of time, as post structures were superimposed. The economic basis of the settlement was apparently grain cultivation and processing, due to relevant finds.
  • Germanic embankment settlement from the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD near the Eydelstedt district of Düsten. The settlement was already known from individual ceramic finds during drainage work in 1937. The settlement remains that have now been discovered, including thousands of ceramic shards and a fibula, were located on an elevated terrain near the Wagenfelder Aue at a silted-up river knee. Two found glass beads from the Roman Empire are made using an elaborate millefiore technique .
  • Golden finger ring with a blue pearl from the 4th to the 7th century, when Uphusen was found

literature

Web links

Commons : NEL Pipeline  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Archived copy ( memento of the original dated November 30, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / pipelinesinternational.com
  2. ↑ Clear the way for Russian gas ( memento from October 24, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) at: ndr.de from October 10, 2013.
  3. NEL pipeline archeology project ( Memento of the original from May 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.archaeologieportal.niedersachsen.de
  4. Gold find: Once a gift for the gods? in: Kreiszeitung.de from October 25, 2011.
  5. Ulf Buchert: A burial ground of the Roman Empire near Gessel in: Reports on the preservation of monuments in Lower Saxony 1/2012.
  6. Despite 2000 years of arable farming an intact burial ground in: Kreiszeitung.de from May 20, 2011.
  7. Almost two kilos of gold from the Bronze Age in: Welt online from February 23, 2012.