Rick Perry: US to sign sanctions bill against Nord Stream 2

The Russian-German pipeline project Nord Stream 2 is set for another round of problems according to the US Energy Secretary Rick Perry. The US has long been critical of the project citing an existential threat to Europe's energy security through over-reliance on Russian gas.

Mr Perry made the comments in Kyiv, where he was attending the inauguration ceremony of the new Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. He said that “the opposition to Nord Stream 2 is still very much alive and well in the US" and that his country would target companies that have been involved in the Nord Stream 2 project in the "not too distant future".

"The United States Senate is going to pass a bill, the House is going to approve it, and it's going to go to the President and he's going to sign it, that is going to put sanctions on Nord Stream 2", he said during a visit to Ukraine, one of the most persistent critics of the joint venture, which is set to build a route for gas deliveries beneath the Baltic Sea," said Mr Perry.

His remarks came a week after a bill was introduced into the Senate by a small group of bipartisan senators that would impose sanctions on vessels used to build deep sea pipelines for the Russian energy export projects. This would include Nord Stream 2.

One of the bill's Republican co-sponsors, Senator Tom Cotton, posted on Twitter that he was "pleased" that Secretary Perry “shares our goal of sanctioning companies constructing Nord Stream II.” Senator Cotton went on to say that “if the project isn’t stopped, Moscow will use the pipeline to split eastern European nations away from those of central and western Europe.”

The White House has thus far not commented on Mr Perry's remarks and a spokesman for the energy secretary said that he was merely expressing a personal opinion. His comments come three weeks after his visit to Brussels where a deal was signed to double the US's LNG export capacity to the EU to 112 million cubic metres from 2020. 

His comments prompted criticism from Moscow, which said that such a move was tantamount to unfair competition and said there would be opposition among European countries.

The controversial Nord Stream 2 project, owned by Russia's Gazprom, is dividing opinion across Europe. In 2016, a petition was signed against the project by the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Croatia, all of whom rely heavily on Russian gas imports. The project has been a consistent worry for the Ukraine too. The country is concerned that Nord Stream 2 will mean a loss of valuable transit fees earned by allowing Russian gas to flow through the country to the EU.

The project has already led to a war of words between the US and Germany, and this is not the first time that sanctions have been threatened. Richard Grenell, the US Ambassador to Germany, wrote letters to companies involved in the project and said that they ran the risk of being sanctioned if they continued working on the project.

At a cost of €9.5-billion, and a joint venture between Russia's Gazprom, Austria's OMV, France's Engie, Germany's Wintershall and Uniper and Dutch-UK Royal Dutch Shell, Nord Stream 2 will run from Ust-Luga in Russia to Greifswald, Germany and is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2020.

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