Kremlin promises to respond to Nord Stream 2 sanctions
Russia is analyzing the situation surrounding the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Due to the threat of US sanctions, the Swiss company Allseas, which was providing its pipe-laying vessels to Gazprom, recently ceased its involvement in the project, halting progress.
Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that Russia will not fail to respond to Washington’s new wave of anti-Russian sanctions. “Our position is that such sanctions are unacceptable to us,” said Peskov, adding that “even such steps will not be an obstacle to the completion of this important project”.
According to Peskov, it is “still too early” to say exactly how Russia plans to respond to the American sanctions, which are enshrined in law, and thus highly unlikely to be changed.
“In any event, such steps will not remain unreciprocated. However, how and when this is done is a matter of Russia’s national interests,” he emphasized.
The commissioning of the gas pipeline, initially planned for the end of 2019, which would have allowed Russia to bypass Ukraine’s gas transmission system, has been postponed until the second half of 2020, Peter Beyer, the German government’s Coordinator of Transatlantic Cooperation, told Bloomberg.
The sanctions, which came into effect on December 20 without any transition period of the kind that Gazprom and Russian officials were expecting, are “completely incomprehensible” in light of the recently achieved gas transit agreements between Moscow and Kyiv, Beyer remarked.
“I was expecting far more understanding from our American friends… that’s no way to treat friends,” he lamented.
According to Bloomberg, Allseas, which owns the fastest pipe-layer in the world, capable of laying up to 5 km of pipe per day, has ceased its involvement in the construction and withdrawn from the Baltic Sea both of the ships that were being chartered by Gazprom.
Gazprom does possess its own ship with the necessary pipe-laying equipment, the “Akademik Cherskiy”, but it is currently in the Far East, and will take approximately two months to reach the construction region.
Russia is expecting the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to be completed very soon in spite of the obstacles, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak told RBC.