“We’re continuing to monitor activity to complete or to certify the pipeline. And if such activity takes place, we’ll make a determination of the applicability of sanctions,” spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters on Tuesday.
She added that Biden, who took over from Donald Trump after being sworn in as US president on January 20, “has made clear that Nord Stream 2 is a bad deal. It’s a bad deal because it divides Europe, it exposes Ukraine and Central Europe to Russia — Russian manipulation, and because it goes against Europe’s own stated energy and security goals.”
Warsaw has strongly criticised the gas link amid concerns that the pipeline will make the European Union more dependent on Russian gas.
The United States last month moved to slap sanctions on a Russian vessel helping build Nord Stream 2, Polish website energetyka24.com reported.
The website also reported last month that German construction and engineering firm Bilfinger had withdrawn from work to build the link amid the threat of new US sanctions.
Nord Stream 2, designed to double the capacity of the existing Nord Stream undersea gas pipeline, is expected to send around 55 billion cubic metres of Russian natural gas a year directly to Germany under the Baltic Sea while bypassing the Baltic states, Poland and Ukraine.
Poland’s minister for European affairs, Konrad Szymański, warned in an opinion piece last year that Nord Stream 2, if completed, would make Europe economically dependent on Russia.
In September, then-US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that America was working to build a coalition of countries to stop the gas link from being completed.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said last year that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline would allow Russia to buy weapons with European money.
Morawiecki has previously called Nord Stream 2 “a new hybrid weapon” aimed at the European Union and NATO.
(pk)
Source: whitehouse.gov