Reportedly, the U.S. State Department attempts to prevent construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline on the Baltic seabed. The reason behind this is that Washington is hell-bent on forcing European countries to buy more liquefied natural gas from the United States and thereby driving the Russian gas group Gazprom out of the European market under the political pretext.
The project Nord Stream 2 involves piping gas directly from Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea, and it is unaffected by sanctions. Five European companies are involved while 100% of the shares belong to Gazprom. Matthias Warnig is CEO of Nord Stream and is also on the board of two large Russian companies, namely Vneshtorgbank and the oil company Rosneft.
As a matter of fact, the U.S. needs a small niche in the European gas market. However, Asia will be its target market. The Americans have already increased the export of gas to China and Japan last year while they have to sustain competition with Russia there. That is why the U.S. attempts to redirect Russian gas supplies to Europe via Ukraine.
Despite politicization of the world's energy market, Ukraine may well preserve a role as the primary conduit for Russian gas exports to the European Union. According to experts, the volume of gas output will be substantially reduced in Norway by 2020. In addition, there might be difficulties about gas supplies from the Netherlands and Algeria. Under the circumstances, Europeans are about to take a renewed interest in gas transit through Ukraine that would allow this country to retain a capacity to convey at least 50-60 billion cubic meters of gas per year. Furthermore, Kiev may expect that investors among European gas operators, who would like to pump billions into the modernization of the Ukrainian pipeline system, could be found in the future.
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