05.07.2009

One billion cubic meter of gas at zero degrees Celsius and at an absolute pressure of 1.01325 bar

Nord Stream is a gas pipeline to link Russia and the European Union via the Baltic Sea. It is planned to transmit up to 55 bcm per annum of Russian gas to Europe across the Baltic sea. First phase of the project to be competed by 2010 and would significantly diversify Russia’s export routes away from Ukraine, Belarus and Poland and would thus reduce Ukraine’s and Belarus’ influence as transit countries and would give Gazprom additional leverage in negotiations over transit fees and the pricing and volume of gas deliveries to its two neighbors. The Nord Stream consortium plans to start constructing the first pipeline in April 2010 and to start transporting gas in late 2011. When completed in 2012, Nord Stream’s twin pipeline system will have a capacity of 55 Bcm/a year of gas. The Nord Stream Pipeline will transport gas from Russia to Germany where it will join the European energy grid.

A corporation, person, agency, authority, or other legal entity or instrumentality that owns or operates facilities for electric generation and is not an electric utility. Nonutility power producers include qualifying cogenerators, qualifying small power producers, and other nonutility generators (including independent power producers).

Electric generation by end-users, or small power producers to supply electric power for their own self-use or for industrial, commercial operations or sales to electric utilities.

Any entity that generates, transmits, or sells electricity, where the tariff is not determined and recovered by a regulatory authority.  Examples of these entities include, but are not limited to, independent power producers, power marketers and aggregators (both wholesale and retail), self-generation entities, and cogeneration firms, as opposed to utility electric supplier

Fuels that cannot be easily made or “renewed,” such as oil, natural gas, and coal. Once they have been burnt they cannot be replaced

A loan in which the lender has no recourse (no means) to get reimbursed by the partners / entrepreneurs who borrowed the money if the project fails, except through foreclosure of the assets used as collateral for the loan. Namely, it is a loan for which the lender cannot claim more than the collateral as repayment in the event that the repayments on the loan are stopped. Lenders (e.g. banks) will therefore examine every facet of an infrastructure project before agreeing to provide the loan and are usually much less willing than the entrepreneur to take a risk. If the infrastructure project is a pipeline project and there is the risk that insufficient quantities of gas will flow through the pipeline to provide a high enough tariff as ROI, the lenders will be weary of agreeing to project finance the project as the pipeline will have very little value once it has been buried in the ground.