{"id":4853,"date":"2020-02-17T19:05:58","date_gmt":"2020-02-17T19:05:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euromenaenergy.com\/?p=4853"},"modified":"2020-02-17T19:05:58","modified_gmt":"2020-02-17T19:05:58","slug":"us-says-it-has-thwarted-6bn-russia-germany-gas-pipeline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/?p=4853","title":{"rendered":"US says it has thwarted $6bn Russia-Germany gas pipeline"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Bloomberg\/Munich<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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President Donald Trump\u2019s top energy official said he\u2019s confident that Russia won\u2019t be able to complete the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea \u2014 and signalled that the US will press forward with its opposition to the project.
\nAsked about Russian efforts to circumvent US sanctions on the pipeline by completing it on its own, US Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette said \u201cthey can\u2019t\u201d \u2014 and dismissed claims that project owner Gazprom PJSC will face only a short delay.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a very long delay, because Russia doesn\u2019t have the technology,\u201d Brouillette said in an interview at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday. \u201cIf they develop it, we\u2019ll see what they do. But I don\u2019t think it\u2019s as easy as saying, well, we\u2019re almost there, we\u2019re just going to finish it.\u201d
\nThe pipeline, which would pump as much as 55bn cubic metres of natural gas annually from fields in Siberia directly to Germany, has become a focus for geopolitical tensions across the Atlantic. Trump has assailed Germany for giving \u201cbillions\u201d to Russia for gas while it benefits from US protection.
\nNord Stream 2\u2019s owners had invested \u20ac5.8bn ($6.3bn) in the project by May 2019, according to company documents.
\nUS sanctions in December forced Switzerland\u2019s Allseas Group SA, which was laying the sub-sea pipes, to abandon work, throwing the project into disarray. The US has said Europe should cut its reliance on Russia for gas and instead buy cargoes of the fuel in its liquid form from the US.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s distressing to Americans that, you know, Germany in particular and others in Europe would rely upon the Russians to such a great degree,\u201d Brouillette said, adding that he is unaware of additional sanctions should Russia move to defy the US.
\nEven as he spoke, signs emerged that Gazprom\u2019s attempts at completion may be underway. A Russian pipe-laying vessel, the Akademik Cherskiy, left the port where it had been stationed in Nakhodka on Russia\u2019s Pacific coast last Sunday. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak last year mentioned that vessel as an option to complete the pipeline in Denmark\u2019s waters. The vessel is now expected to arrive in Singapore on Feb. 22, according to ship-tracking data on Bloomberg.
\nAkademik Cherskiy pipe-laying vessel started moving, only to indicate Singapore as its next indication.
\nWhile Gazprom has said it\u2019s looking at options to complete the pipeline, it hasn\u2019t given any details on where it will find the ship to do the work. One of the pipeline\u2019s financial backers, Austrian gas and oil company OMV AG, has predicted that the Russians will follow through. \u201cFrom my point of view, they will find a solution,\u201d Rainer Seele, OMV\u2019s chief executive officer, told Bloomberg on Saturday.
\nThe pipeline was just weeks away from completion, with 94% already constructed, when US sanctions halted work. There\u2019s a small section in Denmark\u2019s waters that needs to be finished. Before the halt, Nord Stream 2 hoped to finish construction by the end of 2019 or in the first few months of this year. That would allow gas deliveries in time to supply Europe by winter 2020-2021.
\nBesides OMV, Nord Stream 2\u2019s other European backers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bloomberg\/Munich President Donald Trump\u2019s top energy official said he\u2019s confident that Russia won\u2019t be able to complete the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea \u2014 and signalled that the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4867,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[46,48,57,68,76,77,82,86,87,90,96,99,103,107,109,111,113,137,139,146,148,160,174,183,184,201,202,209,222,230,232,233,244,246,249,256,262,263,267,277,279,280,285,288],"class_list":["post-4853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lng","tag-aramco","tag-athens","tag-baroudi","tag-carbon","tag-climate","tag-climate-change","tag-co2","tag-cyprus","tag-decarbonising","tag-democracy","tag-doha","tag-eastmed","tag-egypt","tag-embargo","tag-emissions","tag-energy","tag-energy-peace","tag-gas","tag-gazprom","tag-greece","tag-greenenergy","tag-international-maritime-disputes","tag-lebanon","tag-maritime-boundaries-east-mediterranean","tag-maritime-disputes","tag-offshore","tag-oil","tag-opec","tag-pollution","tag-poverty-alleviation","tag-putin","tag-qatar","tag-rosneft","tag-roudi","tag-russia","tag-saudi","tag-solar","tag-solar-power","tag-straddling-hydrocarbons-reserves","tag-total","tag-trump","tag-turkey","tag-unclos","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}