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German energy firm admits Nord Stream 2 link may never be completed: report

11.08.2020 13:45
German-based energy company Uniper, which is involved in a project to build the contested Nord Stream 2 natural-gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea, has admitted that the link may never be completed, a Polish website reported on Tuesday.
Pipes for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline stored in a depot in Sassnitz, northern Germany.
Pipes for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline stored in a depot in Sassnitz, northern Germany. Photo: Stephan Schulz/dpa-Zentralbild/ZB

The controversial 1,200-kilometre pipeline is designed to have the capacity to send around 55 billion cubic metres of Russian natural gas a year directly to Germany, while bypassing the Baltic states, Poland and Ukraine.

Poland has strongly opposed the project, saying it will pose a threat to Europe’s energy security by doubling Russia’s gas export capacity via the Baltic Sea.

The pipeline is 96 percent completed but construction ground to a halt in December 2019, when the main contractor - Swiss company Allseas - withdrew as a result of US sanctions, according to Poland’s energia.rp.pl website.

Now the United States is threatening to impose new, stricter sanctions targeting companies and organizations participating in the project, the website added.

energia.rp.pl cited Uniper as telling shareholders that, with the intensification of US efforts to impose targeted sanctions on Nord Stream 2, the likelihood that the project will be delayed or not be completed at all has increased.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said earlier this month that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline allows Russia to buy weapons with European money.

“In our opinion, this is paying with European money for weapons for Putin,” Morawiecki said during an online debate held by the Atlantic Council, a US think tank, as quoted by Poland’s niezalezna.pl website.

Morawiecki has previously called Nord Stream 2 “a new hybrid weapon” aimed at the European Union and NATO.

(pk)

Source: energia.rp.pl