“Following recent geopolitical developments leading to the imposition of US sanctions against Nord Stream 2 SA., the company had to terminate the contracts of its employees. We very much regret these developments. » A few dry lines by e-mail to bury a saga of more than ten years, symbol of the progressive rupture between Russia and the West until the shock of the war. “There were no consultations, 106 jobs are lost”said Tuesday 1er march to the Swiss television channel SF the Minister of Economy of the small canton of Zug in central Switzerland, Silvia Thalmann-Gut. The company is bankrupt.
Suspended in its commissioning on Tuesday February 22 by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, sanctioned the next day by the Biden administration, Nord Stream 2 is the first major victim of the economic isolation of Russia by Westerners. Completed last December, this 1,230 km underwater gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea between Russia and Germany would have come to double the Nord Stream 1 pipe put into service ten years ago. It will therefore never send additional Russian gas to households and especially to German industries for which it was designed as a priority.
This 11 billion dollar project was the property of the gas giant Gazprom, armed wing of the Kremlin’s energy power policy. European partners were associated: the Germans Wintershall and Uniper, the Austrian ÖMV, the Anglo-Dutch Shell and the French Engie. While the European Union, aware of its dependence on Russian hydrocarbons, has not yet decided on sanctions against energy groups linked to the Kremlin, the American government had not waited to show its hostility to this new line which further accentuated Europe’s dependence on Russian gas. As soon as he took office, President Biden stepped up pressure on Berlin to slow down or abandon the project. And as the fronts hardened before the invasion of Ukraine, this pipe became the symbol of the confrontation to come.
business continues
The definitive abandonment of the project is not bad news for the United States, “which will be able to push their exports of liquefied natural gas to Europe”, notes an analyst of the sector. Nord Stream 2 is run by Matthias Warnig, a former Stasi agent (GDR), and close friend of Vladimir Putin, whom he met when the latter was a lowly KGB spy in Dresden at the end of the Cold War. The two men met recently. Warnig chairs, still in Zug, another subsidiary of Gazprom and also sits on the boards of directors of the two Russian energy giants Transneft and Rosneft, or even that of the bank VTB. The presidency of the Board of Nord Stream 2 is in the hands of the former German Chancellor SPD Gerhard Schröder.
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