U.S. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette has dismissed reports that Russia’s Gazprom is gearing up to finish laying a natural gas pipeline on the bed of the Baltic Sea without the help of European contractors.
Brouillette told Bloomberg over the weekend that he expected U.S. sanctions on the Nord Stream-2 project to remain an effective barrier to completion because Gazprom did not have the wherewithal to do so on its own. “It’s going to be a very long delay, because Russia doesn’t have the technology,” he said.
The U.S. official was speaking in the wake of reports that the Akademik Chersky, a Russian pipe-laying vessel, was en route to Singapore for repairs. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak had said last year that Gazprom might be able to use the Akademik Chersky to wrap up work on Nord Stream-2.