NORWAY'S GAS grid operator Gassco said on 8 June that it is looking at the feasibility of constructing a new gas pipeline from Norway to either the UK or the Netherlands. "We are facilitating and leading work into a possible pipeline project," company spokesman Kjell Varlo Larsen said on the sidelines of the recent World Gas conference in Amsterdam. Gassco held an open season process in early June at which 17 companies expressed interest in participating in a feasibility study project to look at a number of potential pipeline routes. The study, a part of the Troll gasfield development project, will bring gas from the Kolsnes gas processing plant on the Norwegian continental shelf to the UK, Belgium, or the Netherlands, Larsen said. From Kolsnes, "a direct pipeline could be possible to several existing British network entry points", or to Zeebrugge or Van Helder in the Netherlands, Larsen said. While he said that it was too early to talk about capacities, Mr Larseestimated that the cost of a trunk pipeline of this sort would be "in the region of NOK10 billion ($1.6bn). A shortlist of project participants will be made by December, 2007. Norwegian firms Statoil and Norsk Hydro are thought likely to be partners in the pipeline project. Gas for the pipeline would come both from the Troll development and from surrounding areas, in order to ensure that "no gas is stranded in other areas," Mr Larsen said.