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The new US sanctions against Nord Stream 2, which are pending approval, detail the bureaucratic problems Russia will face, said Elena Zerkal, an adviser to the head of Naftogaz.
The draft US defense budget for 2021, backed by Congress, provides “traps” for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline under construction. On December 11, Elena Zerkal, adviser to the chairman of the board of NJSC Naftogaz Ukraine, announced this in a blog for Ukrainska Pravda.
“The additional penalties … actually make it impossible to implement. The new project imposes restrictions on companies involved in any ‘pipe laying work’ (including site preparation, trenching, seabed exploration. , laying debris, “fill” the pipe at the bottom) or any other work with pipes) “, – he wrote.
The adviser to the head of Naftogaz pointed out that “the most interesting here are two bureaucratic traps that the United States has prepared for the Russians: insurance and certification.”
“It happened in the civilized world that without insurance a ship will not enter any port. And with a new sanctions package, no major organization will provide such services to the project,” Zerkal explained.
According to her, there are “less than two dozen companies in the world that are certifying projects of this level, and when the US sanctions come into force, none of them will risk getting involved with Nord Stream 2”.
“That is, even if the Russians, despite their own technological inconsistency, manage to complete the gas pipeline, it will remain at the bottom of the Baltic Sea with a monument to a pipeline worth nearly $ 10 billion,” Zerkal emphasized.
On December 11, the United States Senate, following the House of Representatives, supported the country’s defense budget project for 2021, which also provides for tougher sanctions against Nord Stream 2. Now the document must be signed by the President of the United States, Donald Trump.
Bloomberg notedthat Trump threatened not to sign the budget bill, as it provides for the renaming of military bases and it does not include repeal of the law that protects technology companies from liability for most user-generated content.
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 almost $ 11 billion. As of December 2019, 93.5% of the pipeline was completed, said the official representative of the project operator, the company. Nord Stream 2 AG – Jens Müller.
Authorities in the United States, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Moldova, Romania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia consider Nord Stream 2 a threat to Europe’s energy security.
The construction of the gas pipeline has been frozen as the US imposed sanctions on European contractors involved in the project in December 2019. Immediately after this, the Swiss company Allseas suspended construction works on Nord Stream 2 and removed its vessels. laying of pipelines of the Baltic Sea. Gazprom announced that Russian pipelayers will participate in the completion of the project.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel argued on September 1, 2020 that Nord Stream 2 would be completed despite threats from the United States. On September 8, he said that he 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 they 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, but on October 17 he announced that the pipeline would be completed.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, who received the most votes, announced a tough stance on Nord Stream 2. He wants to stop this project forever.
The specially equipped Russian vessel “Akademik Chersky” did not begin to complete the construction of the gas pipeline and left for Kaliningrad on November 27. The ship was sent to Russia because the Norwegian company Det Norske Veritas – Germanischer Lloyd, hired by Gazprom to certify the Nord Stream 2, was unable to inspect the ship and its equipment due to US sanctions.
Despite this, a representative from Nord Stream 2 AG announced plans to resume construction of the gas pipeline from December 5. On December 7, it became known that the laying of the gas pipeline in German waters could be continued by the specialized Russian-flagged barge Fortuna.
Construction of the gas pipeline resumed on December 11.
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