Nord Stream Two: The Project’s Implications in Europe (Part One)

Russia, Germany and a consortium of Western European companies have re-activated the Gazprom-led Nord Stream Two gas pipeline project. Parallel to the existing Nord Stream One pipeline on the Baltic seabed, Nord Stream Two would double the system’s total capacity to 110 billion cubic meters (bcm) annually, all earmarked for direct delivery to Germany (see EDM, September 10, 14).

Nord Stream is billed as the world’s biggest natural gas transportation project, in terms of pipeline length and throughput capacities. Initially announced in 2011–2012 through non-binding agreements of intent (see EDM, March 20, 2012), Nord Stream Two had to be shelved for the duration of Europe’s economic slump. The project agreement signed on September 4, 2015, however, is binding. Gazprom’s management anticipates economic-financial recovery in Western Europe and, consequently, gas demand recovery by 2019, the target date for completing Nord Stream Two. It also expects gas extraction to decline in Norway after having been capped in the Netherlands, thus boosting European import demand (Gazprom.com, accessed September 14).

The project’s other role is to bypass Ukraine’s gas transit system, its continuation through the Slovakian and Czech transit corridors, and potentially Poland’s. Those transit routes are beyond Gazprom’s control. The Kremlin intends to re-direct the lion’s share of its gas exports to the “old” European Union into the Gazprom-controlled Nord Stream route. This would not merely deprive Ukraine and those other countries of transit revenue. Strategically, it would result in Gazprom controlling gas transportation as well as the supply to Western European customers.

Gazprom claims that it would, in due course, deliver “new gas”—i.e., gas sourced from newly developed fields—through Nord Stream. But it has not identified those resources; its barely disguised near-term intent is to switch the flow from Ukrainian pipelines into Nord Stream. For years to come, gas volumes diverted from Ukraine will be Nord Stream’s main resource.

In the short and medium term, Nord Stream Two strengthens Russia’s hand against Ukraine and a number of Central-Eastern European countries. Gazprom will henceforth be able to bypass or cut off these countries—or extort concessions under such threats—before these countries would have made arrangements with non-Russian suppliers.

As a bypass project, Nord Stream Two is potentially more effective compared with South Stream (in its various configurations). Bypassing Ukraine, South Stream would have changed Gazprom’s export route but would have targeted basically the same markets. Nord Stream Two, however, aims to break into new, highly lucrative markets in northwestern and western Europe.

The European Commission finally blocked South Stream on the legal level at the end of 2014; and the other southern bypass option, Turkish Stream, looks no more convincing in 2015, even to Moscow, than its closely resembling predecessor Blue Stream Two had looked a decade ago. Thus, Moscow has turned to Nord Stream again in the new circumstances and based on its forecasts of medium-term market demand (see above).

If completed as designed, Nord Stream Two could cement the Russo-German special partnership in the energy sector for the long term, with ramifications in the financial sector and foreign policy.

Germany is the exclusive designated recipient of Nord Stream gas. This evolution casts Germany in a new role, on top of Germany’s familiar role as Europe’s leading importer of Russian gas. Nord Stream Two promises the much-coveted status of an “energy hub” for Germany. It opens the prospect for Germany to become the main center for the transit and storage of Russian gas and its onward distribution in Western Europe. This would mean higher sales revenues for German energy companies, as well as a potential windfall from transit fees and taxes accruing to the German federal and state budgets. Even if Nord Stream One and Two operate (as seems likely) below their combined capacity of 110 bcm per year, the volumes carried into Germany could be staggering in magnitude. The prospects of transit and tax revenue on such a scale must be a significant consideration behind the German government’s support for Nord Stream Two.

Designating Germany as the privileged “hub” country is not an entirely novel idea in Moscow. In 2006, President Vladimir Putin had publicly offered to select Germany as the distribution center for Russian gas in Western Europe. Counting at that time on the development of Russia’s supergiant Shtokman field, Putin proposed to export Shtokman gas through the then-planned Nord Stream One pipeline to Germany, for onward distribution to other EU countries. The Shtokman project, however, turned out to be unfeasible and was abandoned in 2012.

Putin’s stillborn offer to Germany in 2006 would not have affected the Ukrainian transit of Russian gas to the European Union, given that Shtokman gas would have been “new gas,” not diverted from the Ukrainian transit system. Now, however, Russia is at war in Ukraine and is enlisting Germany into this anti-Ukrainian project. It can also be viewed as an anti-EU project, insofar as it enables Gazprom to replace a transportation route beyond its control with a route under its control.

*To read Part Two, please click here.