US Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette has said that he is confident that Russia will not be able to complete its controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline across the Baltic Sea, and signalled that Washington will continue to push forward with its opposition to the project.
Photo: U.S. Embassy London / Flickr Licence: CC BY-ND
When asked about Russian attempts to bypass US sanctions on the pipeline by completing it alone, Brouillette said that "they can't", dismissing claims made by the project's owner Gazprom that it would only face a short delay.
“It’s going to be a very long delay, because Russia doesn’t have the technology,” Brouillette said in an interview at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday. “If they develop it, we’ll see what they do. But I don’t think it’s as easy as saying, well, we’re almost there, we’re just going to finish it.”
The Nord Stream 2 pipeline would pump up to 55 billion cubic metres of natural gas annually from fields in Siberia directly to the German city of Greifswald on the Baltic coast. The project has become a focus for geopolitical tensions in Europe and across the Atlantic. President Trump has criticised German for giving "billions" to Russia for gas whilst simultaneously benefiting from US protection.
Nord Stream 2 map
According to company documents, Nord Stream 2's owners had sunk around €5.8-billion in the pipeline by May last year.
Lawmakers in the US passed the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act last December, which contained sanctions on companies working on the project. The sanctions led to a decision by Switzerland's Allseas Group, which was laying the underwater pipes, to abandon work, throwing the project's future into uncertainty.
The US has repeatedly said that Europe should reduce its reliance on Russian gas and instead import cargoes of the fuel in liquid form from the US, previously described by Brouillette's predecessor, Rick Perry, as "freedom gas".
“It’s distressing to Americans that, you know, Germany in particular and others in Europe would rely upon the Russians to such a great degree,” Brouillette said.
Despite the Energy Secretary's words, signs are emerging that Gazprom's attempts at finishing the project are already underway. Over the weekend, the Akademik Cherskiy, a Russian pipe-laying vessel, left the port where it had been stationed in Nakhodka on the Russian Pacific coast. Last year, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak mentioned the vessel by name as a potential option to complete the pipeline in Danish waters.
According to ship-tracking data on Bloomberg, the Akademik Cherskiy is currently en route to Singapore, and is scheduled to arrive on February 22.
Gazprom has said that it is weighing up its options for the project's completion though has given no details on where it will find a ship to do the work. Austrian gas and oil company OMV, one of the pipeline's financial backers, has predicted that Russia will follow through.
“From my point of view, they will find a solution,” Rainer Seele, OMV’s chief executive officer, told Bloomberg.
When the sanctions kicked in, Nord Stream 2 was a matter of weeks away from completion, with 94% having already been constructed.
The original date for completion had been by the end of 2019, or beginning of 2020, enabling gas deliveries to Europe to be ready in time for winter 2020/21.
Besides OMV, Nord Stream 2’s other European backers are Royal Dutch Shell, Uniper, Engie, and Wintershall.
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