Russia can probably get around the latest U.S. sanctions against Nord Stream 2 and complete the pipeline, industry executives and analysts of the controversial project say. Gazprom PJSC, which owns the project to boost natural gas flows from Russia into Germany, says it’s drawing up alternatives to complete work that was halted a year ago by U.S. sanctions. The Russian company also has options to overcome a new round of penalties that the Congress in Washington is due to approve within the next three weeks.
“The pipeline company will restart pipe laying activities, and this pipeline will be finished,” said Rainer Seele, chief executive officer of OMV AG, the Austrian oil company that’s among the western backers of the link. “We are convinced this project is needed.”
The Nord Stream 2 undersea link to Germany.
Both Democrats and Republicans are pushing for legislation by the end of the year that would tighten sanctions against Nord Stream 2. President-elect Joe Biden has joined Trump in opposing Nord Stream 2, leaving little hope that his inauguration in January will defuse the issue.
“All in all, it is still possible for Nord Stream 2 to be built by summer 2021 and get all the necessary certification to flow gas the following winter,” said Katja Yafimava, senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies and one of Europe’s foremost authorities on pipeline politics.
Further sanctions probably will lengthen that timeline, but she expects Gazprom eventually will find solutions to each of the hurdles thrown up. The U.S., she says, “must realize it cannot stop it.”