Natural gas compressor station to expand the North European Gas Pipeline (NEL)

An application conference, organised by the Lower Saxony State Authority for Mining, Energy and Geology (LBEG), has been held in Brackel (Lower Saxony) in the administrative district of Harburg, marking the launch of the first phase of the energy planning permission procedure for a natural gas compressor station to expand the North European Gas Pipeline (NEL).

At the invitation of LBEG, representatives of the authorities, environmental organisations and business gathered on 21 June 2016 to discuss the study framework for the required environmental impact study. With a view to ensure that also the public were informed about the project at an early stage, the evening before the application conference the project was presented to the residents of the municipality of Brackel.

The compressor station forms part of Germany's Gas Network Development Plan 2016 (NDP 2016) that is currently under consultation with the German Federal Network Agency. The planned facility will play a key role in shoring up northwestern Europe's future energy supply. It will do this by increasing the NEL's transmission capacity significantly by gas compression and so provides a response to changing natural gas availability. This project will make possible that additional volumes of natural gas arising from the planned expansion of the Nord Stream will be absorbed by the existing NEL. The gas will be channelled off to the west without the need to extend the transmission system with extra pipelines.