“This project has been built already and we operate with it daily. It has no really big impact,” Nykvist said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC.
Krause echoed Nykvist's remarks, emphasizing that the Nord Stream 2 project would be built very close to the original pipeline.
“We have been living with that for quite a while. And we are looking very carefully in our exercise areas at whether it has had an impact or not,” he said.
Earlier last week, Ukrainian Parliament Speaker Andriy Parubiy called the construction of the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline a "military threat" to his country which allegedly might provoke "a new full-scale Russian troops' offensive on Ukraine," according to the Unian information agency.
The Nord Stream pipeline, which connects Russia and Germany, went into operation in 2011 and 2012.
Nord Stream 2 is a joint venture of Russia’s Gazprom with France's Engie, Austria’s OMV AG, UK-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell, and Germany's Uniper and Wintershall. It aims to deliver 55 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas a year to the European Union across the Baltic Sea to Germany.
The new pipeline project has been welcomed by some countries in Europe and opposed by some others, including Ukraine and Poland, while the United States has also expressed its opposition.