Crédit Agricole CIB closed along with 26 other lenders a EUR 4 billion limited recourse financing for phase 1 of Nordstream. The Bank acted in the financing as documentation bank, commercial facility agent and joint hedge coordinator.

Nordstream is the project company which builds, owns and operates a 1,200 km natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, across the Baltic Sea. The project, developed in 2 phases, aims to supply about 25% of the European Union’s gas needs by 2025. It is developed by Gazprom and a group of European utilities. Financing for the project comes from Nordstream’s shareholders (30%) and from the bank market (70%).

The phase 1 is financed by EUR 3.2 billion 16-year ECA facilities and a EUR 0.8 billion 10-year commercial facility. Initially launched into the bank market in August 2009, the transaction was highly successful and significantly oversubscribed.

“The Nordstream transaction and our substantive role re-confirm Crédit Agricole CIB’s leading position in the EMEAEurope, the Middle East and Africa Project Finance market and represents an excellent example of co-operation across different product lines and teams” says Peter Goodall, Global Head of Natural Resources.