Russian pipeline faces snags amid Ukraine tensions
FRANKFURT, Germany — The pipeline is built and being filled with natural gas. But Russia’s Nord Stream 2 faces a rocky road before any gas flows to Germany, with its new leaders adopting a more skeptical tone toward the project and tensions ratcheting up over Russia’s troop buildup at the Ukrainian border.
The pipeline opposed by Ukraine, Poland and the U.S. awaits approval from Germany and the European Union to bypass other countries and start bringing natural gas directly to Europe. The continent is struggling with a shortage that has sent prices surging, fueling inflation and raising fears about what would come next if gas supplies become critically low.
The U.S. has stressed targeting Nord Stream 2 as a way to counter any new Russian military move against Ukraine, and the project already faces legal and bureaucratic hurdles. As European and U.S. leaders confer on how to deal with Russia’s pressure on Ukraine, persistent political objections — particularly from EU members like Poland — add another challenge to one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s key projects.
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel backed the pipeline, and the country’s new leader, Olaf Scholz, did so as her finance minister. But his new government took a more distanced tone after the Greens party joined the governing coalition. The Greens’ position was that the fossil fuel pipeline doesn’t help fight global warming and undermines strategic EU interests.
Top German officials, including Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, have said the project doesn’t meet EU antimonopoly regulations.
“Nord Stream 2 was a geopolitical mistake,” Economic Affairs Minister Robert Habeck recently told the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. “The question is open if it will be able to start operating,” adding that further “aggression” meant “nothing is off the table.”
Officials have not said what sanctions or other tools might be used on top of existing U.S.
sanctions against ships connected to the project.
As chancellor, Scholz has been cautious in his comments, and it’s not clear if he’s willing to go as far as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has said it’s “very unlikely” that gas will flow if Russia “renewed its aggression” toward Ukraine.
Pressed on whether an invasion would halt the pipeline, deputy German government spokesman Wolfgang Buechner said Nord Stream 2 is “an undertaking of a private business that is largely completed” and that regulatory approval “has no political dimension.” He stressed that military aggression would have “high costs and sanctions,” without saying what those might be.