“Any entity involved in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline risks U.S. sanctions and should immediately abandon work on the pipeline,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on Thursday.
He added that the Biden administration was committed to complying with 2019 and 2020 legislation with regard to the pipeline and sanctions.
The statement also said that the State Department was monitoring efforts to complete the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and evaluating information about companies doing work on the project.
The State Department slammed the pipeline as “a Russian geopolitical project intended to divide Europe and weaken European energy security."
Pipes for the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea gas pipeline lie in storage at the German port of Mukran at the end of last year. Photo: PAP/Stefan Sauer/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa
A White House spokeswoman said last month that President Joe Biden considers Nord Stream 2 a “bad deal” which divides Europe, and will decide whether sanctions are needed on the project.
The United States in January moved to slap sanctions on a Russian vessel helping build Nord Stream 2, Polish website energetyka24.com reported at the time.
Nord Stream 2, designed to double the capacity of the existing Nord Stream undersea gas pipeline, is expected to send around 55 billion cubic metres of Russian natural gas a year directly to Germany under the Baltic Sea while bypassing the Baltic states, Poland and Ukraine.
(gs/pk)
Source: IAR, state.gov