Gas pipeline factory built in Kotka at record speed

Facility set to operate for just two years

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By Jussi Konttinen
     
      This is no high-tech operation.
      A steel netting is placed around a gas pipe, and the pipe is coated in concrete. The entire setup is then taken outside, where a total of 100 kilometres of ready pipeline and 350 kilometres of uncoated pipeline are in storage.
      EUPEC, which has started the coating of sections of the pipeline that is to be placed at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, showed its facilities to the media for the first time last Tuesday.
      The pipes are coming to Kotka from Russia and Germany. The concrete coating, which contains iron ore, protects the pipeline, and keeps it more firmly on the sea bottom.
     
The EUPEC plant was built at Kotka Harbour at record speed. The construction began in December last year, and production began in September this year.
      “Usually it takes twice as long”, says the factory’s Norwegian director, Tom Tonnessen.
     
EUPEC, a French company, is part of the Korean-owned Korindo Group. Its contract with Nord Stream is worth EUR 650 million. It has built pipe coating plants in Germany and Finland, and is responsible for intermediate storage of the pipe. In addition to Kotka, another intermediate storage area will open in Hanko in February.
      Building a plant in Kotka proved viable, even though the facility will be short-lived. Nord Stream’s pipeline coating operation ends in the summer of 2011.
     
What will then happen to the factory that cost millions to build?
      “We will try to find new projects”, Tonnessen says. One such project might be the coating of pipes for a planned natural gas field in the Barents Sea.
      If no orders are forthcoming, the building will be emptied quickly and sold to the highest bidder. The factory now has 230 employees, of whom 150 are temp workers.
     
The workers have complained about the dust. In the view of occupational safety authorities of the southeast of Finland, EUPEC should have sealed off its concrete cladding station better. Concrete dust contains chromium, which poses a cancer risk.
      “There is dust in all concrete work”, says Tonnessen.
      “There has been dust removal in the device from the beginning. Now we are improving it”, he says.
      On Tuesday dust could still be seen and felt in the air at the plant. “The dust makes you cough. Sometimes I put on a mask, but it is hot”, says N oora Takasuo, a temp worker who was putting a steel net in place around a section of pipe.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 18.11.2009


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Licencing authority calls schedule for gas pipeline licence process “challenging” (1.9.2009)
  Finland wants more information on risks of gas pipeline (9.6.2009)
  Cost of Baltic Sea gas pipeline looks to be higher than expected (8.1.2008)
  Finnish government to give go-ahead for Baltic Sea gas pipeline (5.11.2009)
  Environmental impact of Baltic Sea pipeline greatest in building phase (15.11.2006)

Links:
  EUPEC website

JUSSI KONTTINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
jussi.konttinen@hs.fi