Nord Stream 2, why does Biden save Gazprom?
For Axios, Biden's brake is due to the desire not to reach the final confrontation with Germany and still leave space and time for political mediation, also given the complex tangle of other disputes with Europe. Pierluigi Mennitti's analysis of Eastsidereport.info
Something is moving in the chess match between the US, Germany and Russia on Nord Stream 2, even if the moves don't seem to permanently unlock the game. According to reports from the American online site Axios , President Joe Biden has decided to save the main actor of the doubling project of the gas pipeline under the Baltic, Nord Stream AG, the 100% subsidiary of Gazprom based in Switzerland, from the sanctions. , and its managing director, the German Matthias Warnig. The indiscretion was then also picked up by CNN .
Therefore, no sanctions for the moment against the company led by Warnig, a man very close to President Vladimir Putin, but the economic penalties will instead be applied to the company that manages the Russian ships engaged in the completion work since the beginning of the year. of the deposit of the tubes on the seabed. There are now a few kilometers left, about sixty or so, to the closure of the entire pipeline, after in the first months of 2021 the Russian ships, which had replaced those of a large Swiss company that retired precisely to escape American sanctions, had resumed and completed the connection works to the German terminal of the opera.
In the American political field, Biden's decision has sparked a furious reaction from the Republicans, added Axios , who see in the partial backtrack of the president the implicit will of the new administration not to really prevent the pipeline.
At the time of writing, the news has not yet been confirmed by official sources. Which is why Michael McCaul, a leading exponent of the elephant party and a member of the House of Representatives' foreign commission, used conditionality to criticize the decision. A sort of warning of the controversy that could flare up if confirmations arrive. "This pipeline is not a simple economic project", said the Republican deputy, reiterating the concepts of a fundamental opposition that has so far linked the two US parties, "but a tool to strengthen the harmful influence of Moscow and energy independence. of Europe. If Putin completes the work, it will only be thanks to Biden's pass ”. And Senator Tex Cruz upped the ante on Twitter: President Biden "actively helps" Putin in building his pipeline.
McCaul is a Texan deputy, as is Senator Cruz: the fact that the two biggest antagonists on the parliamentary level come from a state that relies its economic strength on both oil and liquid gas, adds questions and suspicions to the story. On the German side, but even more Russian, it is believed that the American opposition to Nord Stream 2 is linked to the desire to export US liquid gas to Europe, rather than to a real concern of energy dependence.
But while on the Russian side, as told in Matryoshka's previous analysis , they go straight without worrying too much about American moves and counter-moves, in Germany the attention is maximum. Berlin, having reached this point, has no intention or economic interest in dropping the project, which in addition to gas suggests future collaborations on hydrogen. But he must still handle the conflict with Washington with care and smooth diplomacy.
For Axios , Biden's brake is precisely due to the desire not to reach the final confrontation with Berlin and still leave space and time for political mediation, also given the complex tangle of other disputes with Europe, that the end of the Trump presidency obviously didn't evaporate all of a sudden. Biden will be in Europe in June (with stops in London and Brussels for the G7 and NATO). In the meantime, he has sent his secretary of state Antony Blinken and the climate officer John Kerry to scout. They both met with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. The first, as reported by American sources, strongly reiterated the US opposition to Nord Stream 2, suggesting that Biden's move not to sanction the company that manages the pipeline is only tactical. The second, on the other hand, praised the German government's policy to combat climate change: a strategy that, according to Berlin, cannot do without Nord Stream 2, also to compensate for the gradual closure of coal plants, after also decreeing the goodbye to nuclear power.
So the pawns have moved and, even if for now it changes little on the chessboard of the Baltic gas pipeline, it is behind the scenes.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/nord-stream-2-perche-biden-salva-gazprom/ on Wed, 19 May 2021 12:34:03 +0000.