Page 8 - UKRRptSept21

2.0 Politics
2.1 German, US deal on Nord Stream 2 rankels
“Germany Sees No Commitment to Shut Off Russian Gas in Biden Deal,” headlines a Bloomberg story reported in Berlin and based on background interviews with German officials. “Germany has little intention of shutting off Nord Stream 2 if Vladimir Putin tries to use the controversial pipeline as a geopolitical weapon, whatever the U.S. might say,” starts the article by Patrick Donahue. In talks with US officials last month, German officials refused to put in the US-Germany agreement a trigger mechanism for Germany to shut off the gas if Russia threatens Ukraine. According to Bloomberg, officials in Berlin say this should be a EU decision, not a national decision.
The chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee joined counterparts from European parliaments, opposing the US-Germany agreement to allow completion of the Nord Stream 2 undersea gas pipeline. “We consider Nord Stream 2 a geopolitical project geared towards expanding Russia’s influence on Europe by dominating the energy market,” Democratic Senator Bob Menendez said with counterparts from Britain, Czech Republic, Ireland, Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
With Nord Stream 2 99% complete, Ukraine’s goal is to make sure that gas never flows through it, Yuriy Vitrenko, chairman of Naftogaz, told RFE/RL on Saturday. "The battle is lost, but the war isn’t,” he vowed. “And our ‘war’ against Nord Stream 2 continues.” Gazprom owns the pipeline and the gas that is to go through it. This violates the EU’s Third Energy Package, he said. In 2019, Vitrenko led the Naftogaz legal team that forced Gazprom to pay nearly $3 billion in a Stockholm arbitration case.
“US-German gas deal is a disservice to Ukraine,” headlines an editorial in London’s Financial Times. “Russian threat to Europe’s security cannot be ‘parked’ to focus on China.” Editors at the business newspaper write: “Nord Stream has always been at root a geopolitical project... Kyiv is justifiably worried that for Moscow, no longer having to rely on Ukraine’s pipeline for lucrative energy exports would remove a key constraint on further aggression.”
Naftogaz now has 17 billion cubic meters of gas in storage, the legal minimum for the start of the heating season, Naftogaz reported yesterday. With gas prices high, Ukraine’s 11 underground gas storage facilities are only 55% full. Last year, when gas prices were far lower, storage peaked at 92% of capacity.
Due to this summer’s spike in natural gas prices, Ukraine’s energy imports were up 76% yoy in July, Alfa-Bank Ukraine reported yesterday. The energy import bill topped $1 billion for the month.
8 UKRAINE Country Report September 2021 www.intellinews.com