A decade-long, $11bn effort to take gas 1,200km from Russia to Europe ends abruptly at the German coastal village of Lubmin, population: 2,041.
The Kremlin-backed Nord Stream 2 pipeline was suspended last month as part of international sanctions against Russia, before the gas even started flowing. Now the giant tubes that emerge from the Baltic Sea at Lubmin’s northern port have become a curiosity — the metal coils photographed and gawped at by passers-by.Once hailed for bringing employment to Mecklenburg Vorpommern, one of Germany’s poorest states, Nord Stream 2 has become an embarrassment.
“You could almost call what happens here on weekends disaster tourism,” said Lubmin’s mayor Alexander Vogt. “We are the community that takes Russian gas and helps Vladimir Putin — that’s what’s said about us.”
The unused pipeline, meanwhile, is emblematic of Germany’s pressing need to extricate itself from decades of economic engagement with Moscow.
For years, Berlin refused to countenance demands by its transatlantic ally Washington and eastern neighbours such as Poland to reduce its energy dependence on Russia.
The government is now trying to find alternatives to the 55 per cent ofnGermany’s gas, 50 per cent of its coal and 30 per cent of its oil it imports from the country.