The US State Department is monitoring efforts to complete Russia’s Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline and analyzing information on the companies involved, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinkon was quoted as saying by Reuters.
“Any legal entity involved in Nord Stream 2 risks US sanctions and must immediately abandon its work on the pipeline,” Blinkon said. He added that the Biden government is determined to comply with the 2019 and 2020 legislation providing for sanctions on the pipeline.
Shortly after Blinkon’s statement, Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican and opponent of the pipeline, stopped blocking two nominations for President Joe Biden, including William Burns for CIA director, Reuters reported.
Biden said the Nord Stream 2 project was a “bad deal” for both Germany and Ukraine and for US allies in Central and Eastern Europe, Blinkon said.
Currently, the pipeline is 94 percent complete. Its construction was stopped in December 2019 after the Swiss company Allseas stopped laying pipes due to possible US sanctions. Now it remains to lay 120 km of pipes in Danish waters and over 28 km – in German waters.
Work on laying Nord Stream -2 pipes in Denmark’s exclusive economic zone will begin in late March and continue until the end of the third quarter. This shows the schedule of the company Nord Stream 2 (Nord Stream 2 AG), presented on March 18 by the Danish Energy Agency.
Nord Stream 2 will have two lines with a total capacity of 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year from Russia’s coast across the Baltic Sea to Germany. The pipeline bypasses transit countries such as Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and passes through the exclusive economic zone and territorial waters of five countries – Russia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Germany. The only shareholder in the Nord Stream 2 project company is Russia’s Gazprom.
Gazprom’s partners are France’s Engie, Austria’s OMV, Anglo-Dutch Shell, Germany’s Uniper and Wintershall, which provide 50 percentage of funding.
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