Russia has finished laying nearly two thirds of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline along the bottom of the Baltic Sea, the deputy chairman of Gazprom’s management committee has announced.

“The completion of the sea part [of Nord Stream 2] is around 60 percent,” Oleg Aksyutin told the Rossiya 24 channel.

The undersea pipeline, designed to deliver Russian natural gas to Germany and further on to other European customers, is set to be finished by the end of the year. The Gazprom official added that the offshore and land sections of the pipeline were connected on the German side last year and a receiving terminal is currently under construction there. On the Russian end, works are underway to complete the land and sea sections, according to Russia Today.

Denmark’s delayed permission for the pipeline to pass through its territorial waters is considered one of the main hurdles to implementation of the project on schedule. Other countries on the route of the gas pipeline –Russia, Finland, Sweden and Germany– have long-since approved it.