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Cost of new border check-point down NOK 100 million

Storskog border check-point.

By using military explosive clearing personnel instead of civilian contractors to search for WWII explosives on the building site, the price tag for the new border-crossing station at Storskog was reduced with NOK 100 million.

Location

Explosive clearing units from the Norwegian Armed Forces spent two weeks last autumn searching for mines, grenades, ammunition and other explosives from WWII at the site where the new border-crossing station between Norway and Russia is planned to be built.

The military personnel removed large amounts of garbage, scrap metal and other rubbish from the site, reducing the total costs of the project with NOK 100 million (€10.9 million), and the total costs for the new station is now down to NOK 450 million (€49 million), newspaper Finnmarken writes.

Statsbygg, the Norwegian Construction and Property Management Department had originally planned to use robot excavators for the work.

It is now up to the Ministry of Justice and Public Security and Ministry of Finance to decide what will happen further with the project. A concept evaluation that includes forecasts of traffic across the border should be ready by September 1st 2015.

The current border check-point was built in the early 90ies with a capacity of up to 150,000 annual crossings. Last year, more than 320,000 people passed the check-point expected to be even higher this year. Long queues for the travelers and unpleasant working conditions for immigration and customs officers are the results. 

After years of booming traffic, the number of people crossing the border between Norway and Russia started to decline from October 2014, as Russians started to feel the economic pressure from a plummeting ruble. “We believe there is still a need for a new building,” said Stein Kristian Hansen, police officer in charge of Storskog border check point. “Traffic will assumably start to increase again in a few years and it will be beneficial to get started with new building now, while traffic is quiet, so we are ready when it eventually will grow,” Hansen said to BarentsObserver.