The undersea pipeline project, which has been subject to extraterritorial US sanctions since last December, is nearly 94 percent complete, but the United States is desperately trying to halt it through sanctions against the companies involved, Sputnik reports.
The Austrian energy company OMV has called for a “political response” to the latest US threat of sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 project.
The dispute around the natural gas pipeline is about the extent to which Europe will defend its independence, in particular as it pertains to its energy supply, the company’s chief executive Rainer Seele told the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Seele added that it was up to politicians, not the companies, to respond. “However, as a European company, we expect politicians to work to ensure that Europe does not lose its attractiveness as an investment location,” he said.
OMV is among five European investors – along with Wintershall Dea, Uniper, Shell and Engie – which cover half of the total cost of the project, led by the Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom.
Uniper, which is based in Germany and controlled by Finland’s state-owned energy company Fortum, also told the newspaper “with regret” that the United States “continues to try to undermine an important infrastructure project that we believe is important for Europe’s energy security”.
