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US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said the US side expects the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to remain unfinished.
US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo in an interview on September 21 image He said the United States plans to create a coalition to prevent the completion of the Russian Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
“The United States believes that the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline supports Russia and creates a risk for Europe, allowing it to become dependent on gas coming from the Russian Federation and also threatening Ukraine,” the US secretary of state said.
Pompeo stressed that the US side expects the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to remain incomplete.
“We are working to build a coalition to prevent this. We hope that the German government has the same vision, either because of what happened. [российским оппозиционером Алексеем] Navalny, or for the real consequences for safety [Европы]arising from dependence on Russian gas, “he added.
Nord Stream 2 is a gas pipeline that is supposed to connect Russia with Germany along the bottom of the Baltic Sea. The length of the route is more than 1200 km, the capacity of the new gas pipeline will be 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year. The cost of the project was initially reported to be € 9.9 billion, then, according to The New York Times, it grew to nearly $ 11 billion.It is financed in half by Russia’s Gazprom and five European companies: the Anglo-Dutch Shell, the German Wintershall and Uniper, the French Engie and the Austrian OMV.
As of December 2019, 93.5% of the pipeline had been completed, according to the official representative of the project operator, Nord Stream 2 AG, Jens Müller.
Authorities in the USA, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Moldova, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia consider “Nord Stream 2” a threat to Europe’s energy security.
Construction of the gas pipeline has been frozen as the United States imposed sanctions on European contractors involved in the project in December 2019. Immediately after that, the Swiss company Allseas suspended construction work on Nord Stream 2 and withdrew its laying vessels. pipeline of the Baltic Sea. Gazprom announced Project Completion Russian pipe tending.
On July 21, 2020, the House of Representatives, the lower house of the United States Congress, approved the Department of Defense budget for fiscal year 2021, which provides for new sanctions against Nord Stream 2. On July 23, the Senate approved the defense budget bill. The versions of the documents adopted by the House of Representatives and the Senate will be coordinated, after which they will be delivered to the President of the United States, Donald Trump, for his signature.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel claimed as early as September 1 that Nord Stream 2 would be completed despite threats from the United States. On September 8, she said she would coordinate any action against Russia in connection with the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny with European partners, but has not yet decided whether any action against Moscow will affect the construction of the gas pipeline.
On September 11, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said that construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline could be frozen in response to the Navalny poisoning.
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