Pipe-laying for the Nord Stream-2 natural gas pipeline is set to restart in Danish waters, according to a local regulator, Reuters has reported.
Construction of the pipeline on Danish territory was suspended for a year as the United States threatened sanctions. The U.S. has kept broadening the scope of the sanctions against service providers and those funding vessels involved in the construction of Nord Stream 2, and including the project as a target of more sanctions in the U.S. defense bill in a bid to kill it.
This prompted Russia to accuse the U.S. of hybrid warfare earlier this month.
"This is indeed a variant of hybrid warfare, it is used as a hybrid war by the United States," Peskov said, as carried by Russian news agency TASS, when asked whether the Kremlin agreed with a previous statement by Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska that the sanctions were hybrid warfare.
"Let's take the sanctions against Nord Stream - it is a pure hybrid war that goes on like a war accompanied by unfair competition," TASS quoted Peskov as saying earlier this week.
Russian pipeline gas in Europe is a direct competitor of U.S. liquefied natural gas.
Related Video: Weaponized Gas or Bridge to Cleaner Fuel? The Nord Stream Game
Despite the sanction drive, however, some analysts in Russia expect the pipeline could be completed next year and start delivering higher volumes of natural gas to Germany.
The 1,230-km pipeline project, worth $11.6 billion, will double the capacity of the existing Nord Stream channel to a total of 110 billion cu m of natural gas annually. The project is led by Gazprom, in partnership with a number of European energy majors, including Anglo-Dutch Shell, Austria's OMV, German Uniper, and Wintershall-Dea, as well as French utility Engie.
The United States, several European countries, including the Baltic states and Poland, as well as the European Union (EU), have expressed concern about Russia using gas sales and its gas monopoly Gazprom as a political tool.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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Irina is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry. More
Comments
Already 95% of the pipeline has already been completed and the pipeline will be totally completed by the end of the first quarter of 2021 and will start delivering Russian gas to Germany and the European Union (EU) by the end of 2021.
Earlier this month Russia accused the United States of hybrid warfare to derail the pipeline out of self-interest. Russian piped gas supplies to the EU are a direct competitor of U.S. LNG. And despite the sanctions, the Nord Stream 2 is unstoppable.
Dr Mamdouh G Salameh
International Oil Economist
Visiting Professor of Energy Economics at ESCP Europe Business School, London