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Germany's ex-chancellor names two reasons for South Stream termination

Gerhardt Schroder blamed bureaucracy and falling demand for termination of South Stream

MOSCOW, December 11. /TASS/. Germany's former chancellor Gerhardt Schroder has named EU bureaucrats and falling demand for natural gas in Europe as two main reasons for the termination of the South Stream pipeline project.

Schroder said he understands why Gazprom (the Russian gas giant which was supposed to implement the project) with support of the Russian president terminated the project. The main reason, he said, was that the EU tried to hamper with the project's implementation, at first through the Nabucco pipeline project (a gas pipeline project to transport gas from Caspian Sea to Europe to bypass Russia), which was buried in the long run because of risks it involved, than with the help of bureaucratic tricks.