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Eastern Europe
June 15, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 18
risk that it contradicts the goals of the [EU energy policy] Energy Union, and also because of the consequences for Ukraine as a transit country
for Russian gas, because of significant economic losses, which could arise." He believes that the EU "should reduce dependence on Russian gas" as an instrument of "political pressure."
With green lights from Sweden, Finland and Ger- many, Denmark is the last obstacle for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that is being built by Russia's natural gas giant Gazprom and the last country on the pipeline's route to not have issued a construc- tion permit.
Poland continues to actively lobby against the pipe- line within the EU, initiating anti-trust proceedings against Gazprom and pushing for tougher opposi- tion to the pipeline in the European Commission.
More recently the pipeline has been threatened in Switzerland, where bailiffs reportedly visited the office of the Nord Stream company in Zug canton as part of the execution of the $2.6bn decision
of Stockholm Arbitration in favour of Ukrainian Naftogaz.
Gazprom commented that it had not received an official notification about the start of enforcement
of the decision of the Stockholm court’s verdict. But involving the shares of Nord Stream AG and Nord Stream 2 AG would expose the pipeline to additional political risk and is likely to upset its European partners such as Shell, Engie, Uniper, OMV and Wintershall that have already put up considerable amounts of funds to finance the construction.
On June 7 Gazprom said that it had filed an appeal to the Swiss court against the bailiffs’ actions, and will file similar appeals in Dutch courts, which also reportedly acted on behalf of Naftogaz.
Construction of the pipeline is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2019 or early 2020 and the pipeline will carry 50bn cubic metres (cm) of gas a year, about a quarter of Russia’s entire an- nual export of gas to Europe.
While Russia will be obliged to continue to de- liver gas to Europe via Ukraine, which currently accounts for half of Russia’s gas exports west, under the terms of the recently Stockholm arbi- tration court decision, this amount could be cut to a mere 5bn cm a year. In this case Ukraine will forego some $3bn a year in lost transit revenues, which with the delicate state of Ukrainian financ- es, would be a heavy blow for the budget.