Advisers to the administration of former US President Donald Trump considered Germany's proposed offer to the United States of dropping threatened sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline a delaying tactic, the Bild newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing recently revealed documents
BERLIN (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th February, 2021) Advisers to the administration of former US President Donald Trump considered Germany's proposed offer to the United States of dropping threatened sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline a delaying tactic, the Bild newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing recently revealed documents.
In September, it was reported that German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz had offered the United States a 1 billion euro ($1.2 billion) investment in terminals for the liquefied natural gas from the United States along the German coastline to save the project. Back then, the US Treasury did not comment on the reports, citing the talk's secrecy, among other things. The story took a turn after environmental group Deutsche Umwelthilfe, which is actively opposed to the pipeline, published on Tuesday the offer allegedly sent by the German Finance Ministry to Washington. German Environment Minister Svenja Schulze on Wednesday dismissed the deal's existence, although not the existence of the document in question.
The Bild claims to have obtained documents from the Executive Office of the President, in which experts from the National Economic Council (NEC), State Department and Energy Department criticize Berlin's proposal, saying that it looked like a delay tactic to undermine US efforts to stop the project.
"The non-paper attempts to link the US policy interest of promoting liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports to the long-standing US foreign policy objectives of countering Russian malign activity, including the Russian Federation's clear use of energy as a means of political and economic coercion," one of the documents reads.
According to the news outlet, Berlin now expects to reach an agreement with US President Joe Biden's administration. However, a high-ranking US official expressed skepticism about the prospects of that initiative to Bild.
The Nord Stream 2 project aims to lay a 745-mile-long twin pipeline that will carry up to 1.942 trillion cubic feet of gas per year from Russia to Germany, passing through the territorial waters or exclusive economic zones of Denmark, Finland, Germany, Russia and Sweden.
The US is a vocal opponent to the project, as well as Berlin's alleged dependence on Russian natural resources.
