Ukrainian Lobbyists For Years Secretly Helped US Quash Nord Stream 2 - Reports

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 30th November, 2020) Ukrainian lobbyists have been for years secretly assisting the United States in efforts to impose sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and quash the project, which Kiev fears will jeopardize its revenues from the transit of Russian gas to Europe, media reported.

According to The Wall Street Journal, starting in 2016, Vadym Glamazdin, a government-relations official with Ukraine's national oil-and-gas company, Naftogaz, and Oleksandr Kharchenko, an official at Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, were trying to convince Donald Trump's administration and congressional leaders that the pipeline was a threat to Ukraine's energy security, though US leadership at times reportedly showed indifference.

The media outlet notes that, by 2016, when Gazprom moved on with plans for Nord Stream 2, the two officials sent letters to then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in their attempts to stop the project, however, neither of the US officials replied.

Glamazdin was later introduced to Daniel Vajdich, a US lobbyist who had worked on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who had proposed "a change in approach." According to the media outlet, in 2014, Vajdich helped the US government to draft sanctions against Russia that forced Exxon Mobil energy giant to exit a venture with Rosneft and thus deprived the Russian company of some critical technologies.

"That was the model we applied to Nord Stream 2," Vajdich said, as quoted by the news outlet.

Glamazdin and Kharchenko attracted energy think tanks to study Nord Stream 2 for vulnerabilities and in 2018, such a vulnerability was discovered. The publication notes that a Moscow energy expert said at an online energy forum that neither the Russian state nor any Russian company owned a vessel capable of laying pipes at the diameter and depth of Nord Stream 2 and the Ukrainian lobbyists decided to use this information in their efforts to stop the project.

The media outlet recalled that Denmark prohibits vessels from anchoring in some areas in the Baltic Sea since its seabed still holds unexploded World War II munitions and ships are required to use an anchorless positioning system. Then Gazprom signed a deal with Swiss firm Allseas Group SA whose vessel was capable of laying Nord Stream 2 pipes without anchoring. After that, Glamazdin and partners started to develop legislation that would sanction companies technologically assisting the implementation of Nord Stream 2, namely providing pipe-laying vessels.

In December 2019, Washington imposed sanctions against Nord Stream 2 demanding that companies engaged in laying pipes immediately stop the works. Swiss Allseas almost immediately announced the suspension of its work on the project.

In October, US lawmakers decided to include sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 in the new National Defense Authorization Act that would target insurance companies and ship vessels facilitating the construction of the project. The sanctions will target ships laying pipelines or moving rock formations on the sea bed and insurance companies backing the construction and certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in Denmark. About 120 companies from more than 12 European counties would be reportedly affected by the US sanctions.

The new sanctions will be "the final nail into the coffin of this project," according to Glamazdin.

The Nord Stream 2 project aims to lay a 745-mile-long twin pipeline that will carry up to 1.942 trillion cubic feet of gas per year from Russia to Germany, passing through the territorial waters or exclusive economic zones of Denmark, Finland, Germany, Russia and Sweden.