MOSCOW, April 24. /TASS/. The EU is unlikely to change its stance on Russian gas supplies via the Nord Stream pipeline until the conflict in Ukraine is resolved, Alexey Grivach, deputy head of the National Energy Security Fund and expert at the Valdai Club, told TASS.
Earlier Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov recalled that one of the strings of the Nord Stream gas pipelines is technically ready to supply gas to the EU.
"At this point, we see the European Commission persisting in its energy madness, despite occasional calls from across the EU about the need to provide the economy and population with affordable and reliable energy. Especially in the context of the Persian Gulf crisis, the risks of such a policy have increased significantly. But I doubt this policy will be significantly changed before an agreement on Ukraine is reached," Grivach said.
He reiterated that the intact string of Nord Stream 2 could technically be relaunched within a few weeks.
On September 26, 2022, an unprecedented terrorist attack was committed on the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, resulting in only one line of Nord Stream 2 remaining intact out of the system's four pipelines. The Russian Prosecutor General's Office has initiated a case of international terrorism.
The 1,224-kilometer Nord Stream pipeline runs along the bottom of the Baltic Sea from Vyborg in Russia to Greifswald in Germany, with a capacity of 55 billion cubic meters per year. Construction of the similarly powerful Nord Stream 2 pipeline was completed on September 10, 2021, but the pipeline was never commissioned.