Denmark has allowed the completion of Nord Stream 2 using vessels available to Russia

The Danish Energy Agency (DEA) has approved the use of anchor positioning pipe-laying vessels in the construction of the US-sanctioned Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. The decision means that the US will have less opportunity to interfere with the project, and this will require decisive action in any case.

According to the new decision, it will be possible to use pipe-laying vessels not only with a dynamic positioning system. Russia has only one such vessel, the Akademik Chersky, and its maintenance is subject to US sanctions. The easing of the requirements will make it possible to connect the Fortuna barge, which is now standing together with the Chersky in the German port of Mukran, to the work.

Since the end of 2019, 120 km of the section southeast of the island of Bornholm have remained unfinished, in general, the gas pipeline is 94% completed.

The reason for the ban on anchor ships was environmental prohibitions. Now, the DEA decision states that the remainder of the pipeline, passing through the exclusive economic zone of Denmark, “is located outside the area where trawling, anchoring and bottom operations are not recommended due to the risk of submerged chemical warfare agents entering the marine environment,” emphasized in agency.

The Financial Times wrote that if Denmark does not allow the construction of Nord Stream 2 in its water area, then the timing of its launch will be disrupted. The project operator, Nord Stream 2, has not yet announced the timing of completion.

• Nord Stream 2 involves the construction of two strings of a gas pipeline with a total capacity of 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year directly from Russia to Germany along the bottom of the Baltic Sea. This is an alternative route to the Ukrainian route, which the United States actively opposes: instead of “energy dependence” on Russia, the country offers the EU its liquefied natural gas.
• At the end of 2019, the United States imposed sanctions against Nord Stream 2. Because of this, the companies that built the pipeline refused to continue work. In particular, the contractor of Gazprom is the Swiss company Allseas, which laid the pipes.
• In June 2020, senators introduced a bill on new sanctions against the construction of the gas pipeline, suggesting that they be extended to companies involved in the work and those providing insurance and port services.
• After the US Congress proposed softer sanctions against Nord Stream 2: only those companies that continued to provide services to help build the pipeline, as of the date the bill was passed, would face sanctions.
• The consortium to finance the Gazprom project includes the European Engie, OMV, Shell, Uniper and Wintershall Dea. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that the US sanctions against the project are direct interference in the EU's energy policy.
• Extended US sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany will affect 120 companies from 12 European countries and block 700 million euros of new investments.

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