US and Canada reunite against close economic ties between Russia and Germany

In solidarity with Trump’s accusations of Germany, being controlled by Russia through oil and gas cooperation, in the course of NATO Summit in Brussels on July 11, 2018, Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland expressed concerns with the Nord Stream 2, a new Russian export gas pipeline meant to run to Europe across the Baltic Sea.

According to the Canadian Press, she has already discussed the gas project with many countries, including Ukraine, opposing the European extensive energy dependence on Russia, and Denmark which is on the way of the pipeline. Andriy Shevchenko, Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada, stated that Canada, in addition to security reasons, should also be interested in preventing the Russian pipeline from being constructed in order to keep the market open for Canada in future. The same sort of an economic cause might be among those motives considered by the current US administration.

The Nord Stream 2 which almost identically repeats the already-existing Nord Stream pipeline is designed to connect the Ust-Luga area of the Leningrad region and the Greifswald area in Germany in 2019. The length of the new string will be 1,200 kilometres with the total capacity of 55 billion cubic metres of gas per year. The project company, Nord Stream 2 AG which belongs to Gazprom, got confirmation from French ENGIE, Austrian OMV, Royal Dutch Shell, German Uniper, and German Wintershall in their readiness to cover 50 percent of the construction cost. Construction and operation permits for the new Russian pipeline were granted by Finland, Sweden and Germany, while Denmark intends to block or, at least, postpone the realization of the project on the legislative level.