Longest underwater pipeline opened

A ceremony to mark the opening of the world's longest undersea pipelines was held on Sunday.

The 750-mile Langeled pipeline runs from Norway to Easington, East Yorkshire and will provide 20% of the country's gas by the end of 2007.

The event included a ceremonial handover of a cup of tea brewed using natural gas.

Tony Blair and Jens Stoltenberg, his Norwegian counterpart, will attend a completion ceremony on Monday.
The project will see gas stored in huge caverns underground and will be taken out of the reservoir as and when required.

The pipeline will eventually stretch to Ormen Lange, the largest gas field under development on the Norwegian continental shelf.

The pipeline's construction, which began in 2004, is the world's biggest single engineering project. The £1.7bn project has been backed by Centrica and energy giants Statoil, Norsk Hydro, Royal DutchShell and ConocoPhillips.