COPENHAGEN (AFP) - Denmark has agreed to allow Russia's Nord Stream controversial gas pipeline to Germany to run through Danish waters, the country's energy agency said Tuesday, ruling out environmental concerns.

The Nord Stream project, which is led by Russian state-run energy giant Gazprom in partnership with Germany's E.On Ruhrgas and BASF-Wintershall, will run under the Baltic Sea to bring gas from Russia to the European Union.

The Danish Energy Agency concluded the pipeline's passage "was not problematic" and came to the decision "after analysing Nord Stream's environmental assessment reports and hearing what all pertinent Danish organisations had to say," Kristen Erichsen of the agency told AFP.

Erichsen said the decision was "strictly administrative and not political," adding it was "not taken under Russian pressure and was based on Danish regulations in the fields of maritime safety, fisheries and the environment."

In March 2009, Nord Steam AG requested that Denmark let it run two parallel gas tubes under about 173 kilometres (107 miles) of Danish waters.

The company had at the time presented various studies showing the project would not harm the environment, a statement from the Danish Energy Agency said.

The pipeline will link the Russian city of Vyborg and Greifswald in Germany over a distance of 1,220 kilometres, going under the Baltic Sea and passing through Russian, Finnish, Swedish, Danish and German waters.

Finland and Sweden still need to approve the project, which is supported by Russia and Germany but criticised by Poland and the Baltic states, who claim that the project's sole aim is to circumvent them.

The European Union is looking to diversify its gas sources and supply routes to no longer fall pray to disputes between Russia, which accounts for 40 percent of its imports, and Ukraine, through which 80 percent of its Russian gas purchases transit.