US Unlikely to Let American Investor Buy Nord Stream 2 Pipeline US Itself Destroyed

Trump campaign contributor and distressed asset buyer Stephen P. Lynch might theoretically get a shot at buying the damaged Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline if the assets were to ever “come up for sale,” but the US government, widely suspected of playing an instrumental role in Nord Stream’s sabotage, would be unlikely to allow it, renowned British economist Dr. Rodney Shakespeare told Sputnik.

“America destroyed the pipelines because secret American policy is to keep Germany and Europe dependent on (expensive) American gas supplies. So the businessman is unlikely to get permission,” Shakespeare, a visiting scholar at Indonesia's Trisakti University and co-founder of the Global Justice Movement, explained.

If the Ukrainian crisis were to end, there would “likely…be huge pressure to get the pipelines repaired” from a Europe starved of energy. “Any new owner would become immensely rich,” the economist stressed.

But even then, Shakespeare warned that given the hostility of US policy toward the project, there’s no guarantee that the repaired pipelines wouldn’t “be blown up again.”

“My guess is that the businessman will not get permission and that the risk of deliberate destruction in future is such that the pipes will not get repaired,” Shakespeare said.

World

US Investor Lynch Eyes Nord Stream 2 Purchase, Citing Strategic Value for US

22 November, 09:28 GMT

Lynch reportedly applied for a license with the US Treasury that would allow him to negotiate initiating repair work on the damaged $11 billion Nord Stream 2 pipeline with entities under US sanctions, and has reportedly lobbied officials to allow him to invest in the damaged pipeline network to secure “American and European control over European energy supply for the rest of the fossil-fuel era.”

Nord Stream 2 was completed in September 2021, but never commissioned amid heavy US pressure on its European NATO allies to wean themselves off reliance on cheap and dependable Russian energy in favor of more costly US liquefied natural gas exports to Europe.

In September 2022, three of four strings of the combined Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipeline networks were damaged in a series of explosions, causing the largest-ever man-made release of methane and deprived Europe of the capacity to import up to 110 billion cubic meters of Russian gas per year.

In February 2023, veteran US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh alleged, citing insider information, that US Navy divers carried out the sabotage attack targeting Nord Stream. US officials dismissed these allegations, and maintain that Russia may have blown up its own pipeline.

"I don't want to get our country in trouble, so I won't answer...But I can tell you who it wasn't – Russia. It wasn't Russia," President-elect Donald Trump told US media in April 2023. "How about when they blamed Russia. You know they said 'Russia blew up their own pipeline.' You got a kick out of that one too," Trump said.

After the release of Hersh's bombshell story, US and German media have coordinated the release of a series of articles alleging that amateur Ukrainian saboteurs, not the US Navy, was responsible for the attack on Nord Stream.

World

Dog Ate My Nord Stream: German Media Doubles Down on Ukrainian Connection Claim

20 November, 15:35 GMT

In an interview with Tucker Carlson in February, Russian President Vladimir Putin said it was "clear to the whole world" that the US was responsible for the Nord Stream sabotage. Germany's silence on the matter shows that its leaders are "guided by the interests of the collective West rather than its [own] national interests," Putin added.

US Unlikely to Let American Investor Buy Nord Stream 2 Pipeline US Itself Destroyed - Economist