Mecklenburg-Vorpommern District

German company Bilfinger SE is reportedly withdrawing from Nord Stream 2 project – Business & Economy


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BERLIN, January 19 / TASS /. The German company Bilfinger SE decided not to participate in the implementation of the Nord Stream 2 project due to the threat of US sanctions, reported the Bild-Blatt newspaper on Tuesday, citing the company’s letter.

According to the newspaper, Bilfinger SE had previously had several contracts worth 15 million units with Nord Stream 2AG, the operator of the project.

Bild reported that Bilfinger SE had already informed the American side that it would not fulfill these contracts.

German officials repeatedly said Berlin viewed Nord Stream 2 as an economic project. Berlin stressed that Ukraine should keep its role as a transit country for gas.

In Germany, they consider the extraterritorial US sanctions to be illegal. The state government of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania had previously set up a special environmental foundation. One of its jobs is to support the Nord Stream 2 contractors and protect them from US sanctions. Germany’s Greens criticized the establishment of the fund.

On Tuesday, the US Treasury Department announced sanctions would be imposed on the Fortuna ship involved in the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and its owner, the KBT-Rus company.

The sanctions were imposed under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). Inclusion on the sanctions list means freezing assets in the United States and prohibiting US citizens or companies from doing business with anyone on the list.

The Nord Stream 2 project envisages the construction of two strings of pipeline with a total capacity of 55 billion cubic meters per year from the Russian coast through the Baltic Sea to Germany. To date, more than 2,300 km of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline (of around 2,460 km) have been laid, which is 94% of the total length of the gas pipeline. The construction of the pipeline was suspended in December 2019 after the Swiss Allseas stopped laying due to possible US sanctions. In December 2020, the project operator Nord Stream 2 AG resumed pipe-laying and built a 2.6 km long pipeline in the German exclusive economic zone with the Russian pipe-laying ship Fortuna. Gazprom expects Nord Stream 2 to go into operation within a reasonable timeframe. The holding company notes that Nord Stream 2 will remain one of its priority investment projects in 2021.

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