“Our sanctions and authorities are working and we will stop this pipeline” from being completed, Christopher Robinson, a deputy assistant secretary in the US State Department’s Europe and Eurasia bureau, said at a virtual conference this week.
“Our message is clear that for those who are aiding and abetting this Russian malign influence project, they must get out now or face the consequences,” Robinson told the online conference, held by the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank.
"We don't want to have the sanctions, but we will use these authorities and these tools to stop the project," he also said on December 16.
During the same conference, US Republican Senator Ted Cruz said he believed that new American sanctions would prevent the completion of the controversial Russia-Germany gas link even as Moscow scrambled to finish the undersea project, Polish website energetyka24.com reported.
“This project, I believe, will never deliver gas,” Cruz said.
He added that US sanctions targeted "critical vulnerabilities without which the pipeline cannot be completed."
The US Congress earlier this month passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which includes legislation sanctioning any companies that provide upgrading services for vessels working on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline or that provide insurance and certification services for the project, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.
In October, the United States targeted companies “providing services or facilities for upgrades or installation of equipment” for vessels participating in the construction of Nord Stream 2 and companies funding those upgrades and installations.
The pipeline is designed to have the capacity to send around 55 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas a year directly to Germany under the Baltic Sea while bypassing the Baltic states, Poland and Ukraine.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a media interview in September that the United States was working to build a coalition of countries to stop the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from being completed in Europe.
Speaking out on the pipeline last year, US President Donald Trump said: “We’re protecting Germany from Russia and Russia is getting billions and billions of dollars from Germany.”
Poland’s minister for European affairs, Konrad Szymański, warned in an opinion piece in September that Nord Stream 2, if completed, would make Europe economically dependent on Russia.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in August that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline allows Russia to buy weapons with European money.
Morawiecki has previously called Nord Stream 2 “a new hybrid weapon” aimed at the European Union and NATO.
(gs/pk)
Source: energetyka24.com, rferl.org, atlanticcouncil.org