WARSAW, January 27. /TASS/. Poland hopes the U.S. will offer political support for the republic in counteracting the Nord Stream-2 project, Poland’s Foreign Minister Yacek Czaputowicz told a joint news conference following a meeting between the U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Saturday.
"Poland has criticized Nord Stream-2 as an instrument of political pressure," he said.
"We shall ask the U.S. partners to support our politics in this sphere.".
Besides, the Polish foreign minister stressed important of the U.S. participation in improvement of the republic’s energy security. "We share the view about necessary diversification of energy sources, including by importing the U.S. liquefied natural gas," he said.
In late November, 2017, Poland’s energy company PGNiG (Polskie G·rnictwo Naftowe i Gazownictwo) signed a contract on LNG supplies from the U.S. This contract will be an alternative for buying gas from Russia, the Polish company said. The deal’s term is five years, its cost is not announced.
In December, Russia’s Natural Resources Ministry said that it had officially notified the environmental authorities of all Baltic countries that Russia had completed international procedures envisaged by the Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment within a transboundary context for the construction of the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline.
The Nord Stream 2 pipeline is expected to come into service at the end of 2019. The pipeline is set to run from the Russian coast along the Baltic Sea bed to the German shore. Each of the pipeline’s two stretches will have a capacity of 27.5 bln cubic meters. The new pipeline that is expected to connect the Russian resource base with European customers, will double the capacity of the first line and will basically follow its route. The cost of construction of the Nord Stream-2 is estimated at 9.5 bln euros.