The Nord Stream 2 project will be completed despite US threats of sanctions, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday, as quoted by the MDR TV channel.
According to the broadcaster, Merkel spoke against the sanctions during her visit to Stralsund.
In early August, US Senators Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton and Ron Johnson wrote a letter to Sassnitz GmbH, operator of Mukran Port, threatening them with "financial destruction" if they did not stop providing logistical support for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project.
The German Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations responded to the threats, demanded that Berlin and the European Commission react and protect German and European companies from such "attacks by third countries". The committee also asked for financial and legal support from extraterritorial sanctions.
The construction of the pipeline was halted in December 2019, when there was just 160 km left to build after the US had threatened to impose "fatal" sanctions on AllSeas, a Switzerland-based contractor working on the joint Russian-Western European energy project.
The US has been pressing on Nord Stream 2 while trying to boost exports of its liquefied natural gas to Europe. Washington insists that the new pipeline may pose a national security risk, a claim that both Russia and Germany deny, describing the US actions as an example of unfair competition.
Nord Stream 2 is a joint venture between Russia’s Gazprom and several Western European energy companies including Uniper, Wintershall, Engie, OMV and Royal Dutch Shell. The pipeline is expected to double the existing Nord Stream capacity to 110 billion cubic meters of gas capacity per year.