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A Norwegian agency that was meant to have offered technical and security certificates for Russia’s fuel pipeline to Germany has deserted the venture on account of US sanctions.
“DNV GL will cease all verification activities for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline system in line with sanctions and while sanctions are in place,” it stated in an announcement despatched to EUobserver on Monday (4 January).
“We are implementing a plan to wind down our verification support to the project. As the situation currently stands, DNV GL cannot issue a certificate upon the completion of the pipeline,” it added.
A spokesman for the agency stated the choice got here following new US laws handed on Friday referred to as the Protecting Europe’s Energy Security Clarification Act.
He declined to touch upon how DNV GL’s resolution would possibly affect the pipeline.
“Legal requirements for certification and verification vary depending on national jurisdictions,” he stated.
But he famous that the Norwegian firm had been engaged on Nord Stream 2 for 5 years previous to the US crackdown, indicating that it’d take a very long time for a distinct agency to step in and do the job as a substitute.
The newest blow to the Russian-German venture got here after earlier US sanctions prompted Swiss-based agency Allseas to desert pipe-laying on the final segments of the 1,224km pipe in late 2019.
A Russian ship, the Fortuna, later stepped in to exchange Allseas.
The Fortuna accomplished a 2.6-km part in German coastal waters in late December.
And it plans to put the ultimate, 100 km-long, section in Danish waters, in work beginning on 15 January.
The Russian-owned Nord Stream 2 consortium and the Russian mission to the EU didn’t remark when requested by EUobserver if DNV GL’s resolution would hurt the venture.
The €9.5bn pipeline would imply some 80 % of Russian fuel exports to the EU would movement by way of Germany, making it simpler for Russia to chop off nations resembling Poland or Ukraine in future for political causes.
It was meant to have been accomplished by 2021.
But US officers, talking to the Reuters information company final week, stated extra sanctions had been to return.
“We’ve been getting body blow on body blow to this, and now we’re in the process of driving a stake through the project heart,” one of many US officers stated.
The US has complained that Nord Stream 2 was a geopolitical instrument designed to extend EU dependence on Russia, in views shared by a number of central European and Nordic nations.
But Germany has vowed to go forward even when the incoming administration of president-elect Joe Biden continues to oppose it.
“We do not need to talk about European sovereignty if that is understood as us doing everything in future the way Washington wants us to,” German overseas minister Heiko Maas advised the DPA information company on 28 December.
“The German government will not change its stance on Nord Stream 2,” he stated, including: “The important thing is that we [Germany and the US] are aligned on the central strategic and geopolitical issues, that we are on the same side of the field”.
Germany’s Uniper and Wintershall, Anglo-Dutch oil agency Royal Dutch Shell, Austria’s OMV, and French agency Engie have co-financed the Russian venture.
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