Nord Stream 2 will be built despite EU Gas Directive

By Murat Temizer

ANKARA

The Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, which is due to come online by the end of 2019, will be built despite the EU's Gas Directive amendment, Vladimir Chizhov, Russian envoy to the EU announced on Thursday.

The new provisional directive agreed Wednesday governing gas pipeline imports, including Russia's planned Nord Stream 2 to bring gas to Europe, calls for all import pipelines not to be directly owned by gas suppliers and to allow at least 10 percent of the transit capacity to be made available to third parties.

According to Russia's Sputnik news agency, Chizhov, when asked if it was possible that the directive would come into force before the pipeline was launched, responded, "...The pipeline will be built. You should not doubt that."

The European Commission announced in a statement Wednesday that the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union would approve the amendments in the coming months.

Following this provisional agreement, the text of the directive will be prepared in all EU languages and will then be formally approved by the European Parliament and the EC, after which the directive will need to be to be transposed into national law within nine months.

In November 2017, the EC proposed extending EU energy rules to gas pipelines from non-EU countries to Europe.

The Nord Stream II project was announced on June 18, 2015, when Shell, Russia’s Gazprom, Germany’s E.ON and BASF along with Austrian OMV signed a memorandum of understanding for the construction of the project, which will add two additional pipelines to the original Nord Stream project.

The Nord Stream II project is planned to have a 55 billion cubic meter capacity, which will continue from Russia to Germany across the Baltic Sea.