{"id":7288,"date":"2019-02-08T17:54:35","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T17:54:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/nord-stream-2-eu-agrees-tighter-rules-for-russian-pipeline\/"},"modified":"2019-02-08T17:54:35","modified_gmt":"2019-02-08T17:54:35","slug":"nord-stream-2-eu-agrees-tighter-rules-for-russian-pipeline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/nord-stream-2-eu-agrees-tighter-rules-for-russian-pipeline\/","title":{"rendered":"Nord Stream 2: EU agrees tighter rules for Russian pipeline"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div property=\"articleBody\">\n<figure class=\"media-with-caption\">\n<div class=\"player-with-placeholder\">\n            <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"media-placeholder player-with-placeholder__image lead-video-placeholder\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/images\/ic\/720x405\/p070c6pd.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Media playback is unsupported on your device<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div><figcaption class=\"media-with-caption__caption\"><span class=\"off-screen\">Media caption<\/span>Gas wars: The problem with Nord Stream 2<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">EU ambassadors have agreed to toughen regulations on a controversial gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, but they have decided not to back plans that might threaten its completion.<\/p>\n<p>Work on the 1,225km (760-mile) Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic Sea is already well under way and is set to be finished by the end of 2019.<\/p>\n<p>The EU wants to bring pipelines coming into the bloc under its energy rules.<\/p>\n<p>Germany feared that would make the pipeline uneconomic and unviable.<\/p>\n<p>In the end 27 of the bloc&#8217;s 28 ambassadors reportedly agreed with a Franco-German compromise, which meant that Germany could remain as lead negotiator on the Nord Stream 2 project.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"story-body__crosshead\">What are the worries with Nord Stream 2?<\/h2>\n<p>Russia currently supplies around 40% of the EU&#8217;s gas supplies, just ahead of Norway, which is not in the EU but takes part in the bloc&#8217;s single market.<\/p>\n<p>For years, the 28-member bloc has been concerned about reliance on Russian gas.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape no-caption full-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>            <\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Poland has warned that Russia could use Nord Stream 2 to harm Europe&#8217;s energy security, and US President Donald Trump even accused Germany of being a &#8220;captive&#8221; of Russia because of it.<\/p>\n<p>Nord Stream 2 will only increase Russia&#8217;s supply, it also means that, along with its TurkStream project, Russia will be able to bypass Ukrainian pipelines. The loss of transit fees would hit Ukraine&#8217;s economy hard.<\/p>\n<p>A big priority for the EU is to increase competition too, and instead of a patchwork of different agreements for pipelines entering the bloc it wants Nord Stream 2 to come under internal EU rules on transparency and separating ownership of the pipes from the supplier.<\/p>\n<p>It is trying to look beyond Russian gas &#8211; to imports of US liquified natural gas (LNG) and new pipelines, such as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baltic-pipe.eu\/\" class=\"story-body__link-external\">a planned Norway-Poland pipeline via Denmark<\/a>, that would supply Sweden and other neighbouring states.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"story-body__crosshead\">Why is Germany backing the new pipeline?<\/h2>\n<p>German businesses have invested heavily in Nord Stream 2 and former Chancellor, Gerhard Schr\u00f6der is running the project.<\/p>\n<p>As well as Germany&#8217;s Uniper and BASF&#8217;s Wintershall unit, other European companies have stakes too, including Anglo-Dutch Shell, OMV of Austria and Engie of France.<\/p>\n<p>Chancellor Angela Merkel tried to assure Central and Eastern European states on Thursday that the pipeline would not make Germany reliant on Russia for energy.  <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Germany will expand its network of gas terminals in regards to liquified gas. Meaning, for gas we do not want to be at all dependent on Russia alone,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>Russian government spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow hoped the disagreement would be sorted out. &#8220;We still believe that this project is beneficial to both the European gas consumers&#8217; interests and to Russian Federation as gas supplier,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-europe-47170420\">Source<\/a> by <a href=\"\">[author_name]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Media playback is unsupported on your device Media captionGas wars: The problem with Nord Stream 2 EU ambassadors have agreed to toughen regulations on a controversial gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, but they have decided not to back plans that might threaten its completion. Work on the 1,225km (760-mile) Nord Stream 2 pipeline under &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}