Polish President calls for halt of Nord Stream 2 pipeline construction
During his visit to London, Polish President Andrzej Duda urged Germany to abandon the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, Deutsche Welle reported.
The second gas pipeline running under the Baltic Sea will lead to the disruption of the ‘energy balance’, he said during a joint press conference with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Tuesday, October 23, in Berlin.
According to Duda, the new gas pipeline will lead to the dominant position of a single supplier and will complicate the energy supply to a number of Eastern European countries.
“We are surprised about the European Commission's unwillingness to express its negative stance (on the project of Nord Stream 2),” Duda said and stressed that it was rather a political than a social matter.
Duda said that Poland does not see any need to construct the Nord Stream 2 pipeline since European countries can buy more LNG. He pointed to the offer of the United States to sell LNG. In his turn, Steinmeier said that the decision to purchase liquefied gas is not political but economic.
Nord Stream 2 poses a threat to the transit of Russian gas through the Natural gas transmission system of Ukraine.
The construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline is expected to be completed by the end of 2019. The 1220-km pipeline will run along the bottom of the Baltic Sea from the Russian coast to the coast of Germany. The capacity of each of the two lines is 27.5 billion cubic meters per year.
The new gas pipeline will double the capacity of the first Nord Stream, the route of which it will basically repeat.