Rügen is the most popular German holiday island, more than 1.25 million people stayed there in 2022 alone, many in one of the classic seaside resorts such as Binz or Sellin. And certainly not a few of them let themselves be sailed past the famous chalk cliffs. Soon the island’s coast will be enriched by another, albeit less picturesque and highly controversial attraction: the liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in Mukran, in the north-east of the island. Because the Stralsund Mining Authority has now allowed the construction of the first section of the connecting line. The federal government considers the terminal to be necessary because of the security of the energy supply. Critics, on the other hand, see this as a disfigurement of nature and warn of losses in tourism and irreversible interference in the Baltic Sea ecosystem due to the large tankers. But “the Stralsund mining authority today gave Gascade Gastransport GmbH approval for the first section of the Baltic Sea connection line (OAL) from Lubmin to kilometer point 26 and the Mukran land section,” said Gascade, the company responsible for the construction.
The section covers about half of the approximately 50-kilometer-long line. This part runs from Lubmin through the Greifswalder Bodden to the coast of southeast Rügen. The approval process for the remaining part up to Mukran is still ongoing. The Stralsund Mining Authority has also approved the construction of the landing point in Mukran, including a so-called micro tunnel. The line is supposed to land there through it. As a result, only the second lake section is the fourth sub-project of the connecting line. Here, too, the approval process is already underway. For the terminal in the port of Mukran, however, it is not the Stralsund Mining Authority that is responsible as the approval authority, but the State Office for Agriculture and the Environment in Western Pomerania. The project developer, Deutsche Regas, is said to be preparing an application.