Claims targeting Russia over the Nord Stream-2 pipeline project
claiming it unnecessary and harmful to Ukraine are exaggerated,
according to Nikos Tsafos, president and chief analyst of Enalytica, a
Washington-based energy-think tank on Saturday.
Lithuania's
Foreign Relations Minister Linas Linkevicius said on Thursday that the
European Union does not need a new Nord Stream pipeline and that the
project will be very harmful to Ukraine.
Tsafos says in his
analysis entitled,Europe's Dangerous Distraction: Pipelines
thatpipeline games in Europe never end. His analysis revealsthat
although it appears thatthe South Stream is dead, he says it has just
been relocated through the proposed TurkishStream which the new
government in Greece immediately saw as an opportunity to participate
in. He claims that this has now triggered Russia to mull overexpansion
to the Nord Stream, the pipeline that connects Russia to Germany.
The
first two pipelines of the Nord Stream have been operational since 2011
and 2012, with an annual gas capacity of 55 billion cubic meters.
The 1,224-kilometer-long gas pipeline runs from Vyborg in Russia under the Baltic Sea to Greifswald in Germany.
The
Nord Stream-2 project was announced on June 18, when Gazprom, E.ON,
Shell and OMV signed a memorandum of understanding for the construction
of the project, which willadd two additional pipelines.
"At the
time when Russia is waging an actual war in Ukraine and can trigger a
major change in the status quo in Europe, and at a time when a powerful,
ambitious and strategic leader in Russia is being cornered by
sanctions, isolation and a weakening economy,an enormous amount of
energy is directed to support or oppose a spaghetti bowl of pipelines
whose significance is marginal in the grand scheme of things," Tsafos
said adding that gas as a commodity is interchangeable.
"Ukraine
is a proof of this fungible issue. Nord Stream reduced the amount of
Russian gas that transits Ukraine, but increased the supply of gas in
Germany and this surplus gas found its way into Ukraine from the West,"
he said.
Germany, as the largest consumer of Russian gas, received40.3 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Gazprom last year.
-"Timing is curious"
On
the other hand Tim Boersma, a fellow researcher and acting director of
foreign policy, energy security and climate initiative at the Brookings
Institution, said that"the timing of Nord Stream is curious, but if
pipeline expansions to Europe comply with European regulations in terms
of third party access and such, I do not see why they could not be
built."
According to Boersma, Ukraine will remain a transit
country beyond 2019, but it will lose importance as additional capacity
fromthe Nord Stream andcapacity inthe south from theTurkish Stream,
TAP and TANAP come online.
"We shall see which of these projects
will eventually make it, this is difficult to say at this pointmostly
because gas demand in Europe does not grow," Boersma added.
Russian
natural gas giant Gazprom's Deputy Chairman Alexander Medvedev said
June 8 that Russia will not renew its gas transit contract withUkraine,
andis planning tostop delivering gas through this country to Europe
after 2019.
(Anadolu Agency)