MOSCOW, May 18 (Reuters) - A Russian pipe-laying vessel,
Academic Cherskiy, and which Moscow can use to finish laying
pipes for the Nord Stream 2 gas project, has moored near the
German logistics hub in Mukran, Refinitiv Eikon tracking data
showed on Monday.
Led by the state gas company Gazprom, Nord Stream
2 had to suspend pipelaying works late last year, hit by fresh
U.S. sanctions. The project is aimed at doubling existing
undersea flows to Germany to 110 billion cubic metres per year.
Cherskiy, bought by Gazprom in 2016, has sailed from the
Russian Pacific port of Nakhodka where it was docked in December
when the U.S. sanctions put the plan to finish the remaining
160-km stretch near the Danish island of Bornholm on hold,
accoridng to the Refinitiv Eikon data.
Nord Stream 2 declined to comment on the timeline but,
without naming specifically Cherskiy in a statement to Reuters,
said that it was "forced to look for new solutions to lay the
remaining 6%".
"Nord Stream 2 as well as the companies supporting our
project are convinced that the soonest possible commissioning of
the pipeline is in the interest of Europe’s energy security,"
the consortium said in an email.
Gazprom did not reply to a request for a comment.
The original pipepayer, the Swiss-Dutch company Allseas,
stopped works due to the sanctions and President Vladimir Putin
has said that Nord Stream 2, aimed at bypassing Ukraine, could
be now launched by end-2020 or early next year.
Germany's energy regulator on Friday, however, declined to
grant a waiver of European Union gas directives to the Nord
Stream 2 pipeline, dealing a fresh blow to the project to carry
gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea.
The Nord Stream 2 consortium also includes Uniper,
Wintershall-Dea, Royal Dutch Shell, OMV
and Engie.
(Reporting by Maria Grabar
Writing by Katya Golubkova; editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
