Gas racketeering: EU wants to take 50% of Nord Stream 2 from Russia

On August 25, a court in Dusseldorf, Germany, ruled to reject an appeal by the Nord Stream 2 operator, Nord Stream 2 AG, which was trying to challenge the German regulator's decision to keep the project under the EU gas directive. A seemingly routine decision in the field of corporate law, in fact, can cost Russia no less, and the rights to sell to the end consumer exactly half of the entire throughput capacity of the new pipeline - 27,5 billion cubic meters of gas annually.

In order to understand how this, in principle, became possible, it is necessary to go back two years. In February 2019, after lengthy discussions, the Council of Ministers of the EU member states ratified the amendments to the EU Gas Directive. The changes primarily affected the expansion of the rules applied to internal EU pipelines, extending them exclusively from onshore and offshore pipelines leading from third countries and passing through the territory of the Union.



The revised EU Gas Directive entered into force in May 2019, becoming part of the EU's Third Energy Package. Its goals of “liberalizing the European energy market and limiting monopolies of energy suppliers” looked quite reasonable on paper, if we ignore one “but”: the provisions of the Directive were de facto aimed strictly at one specific project - Nord Stream 2.

The prerequisites for such a point effect are as obvious as they are cynical. In the midst of desperate, but as it will become known later, fruitless attempts by the United States to stop the project, the European bureaucracy suddenly realized that the gas pipeline under construction opens up very real prospects for making money not only on gas transit, but also on its implementation. It is enough just to hide behind higher goals in the face of the fight against monopolies, to reduce the bandwidth for Gazprom's own distribution by half, forcing the Russian gas giant to transfer half of all gas supplied to European companies "on the basis of publicly published tariffs" for subsequent, one would like to say, "fair" distribution on the territory of the EU.

Simply put, the EU wanted its share of the "gas pie", forbidding Gazprom itself to sell its own gas supplied through its own pipeline (!), And introducing a number of "gasket firms" into the scheme for the sale of energy resources, designed to take half of the end consumers from the Russian giant ... As a result, Gazprom will have to cooperate with these companies, even if this entails the creation of additional costs and, as a result, an unjustified increase in prices for the European consumer. The intention of EU officials is quite understandable, in the event of complaints from EU citizens about inflated tariffs, they can always refer to the Russian side - they say gas prices are growing because the Russians want too much. You can always tactfully keep silent about your own influence on the growth of tariffs, hiding the thirst for profit on your own voters for strict observance of the letter of the law.

After all, from the point of view of law, everything was done very carefully, in the style of the classical European bureaucracy. According to the provisions economic In science, gas pipelines are objects of natural monopolies, but the sale of the supplied gas is no longer there. Accordingly, the authorities will be able to do whatever they want with this implementation, and completely within the legal framework.

The true intentions of the EU are visible to the naked eye - just pay attention to the timing of the adoption of the Gas Directive. European politicians It was well known that the construction of Nord Stream 2 was supposed to be completed in 2019, so they quite deliberately adopted the revised document at a time when the gas pipeline was not yet ready for commissioning, adding provisions on “pipelines from third countries ". Simply put, at the beginning of the construction of Nord Stream 2, the EU authorities offered some conditions, and closer to its completion they suddenly decided to drastically change them, and in their favor.

Of course, if Gazprom were a non-state company, and the United States did not conduct such an aggressive policy directed against it, and in general, Russia's interests in Europe, the new conditions would hardly be so harsh. However, EU officials quite pragmatically found a way for relatively honest enrichment with minimal efforts on their part. And all this despite the fact that initially 50% of the project was financed by European companies: French ENGIE, Austrian OMV, Dutch Royal Dutch Shell, as well as German Uniper and Wintershall. That is, the involvement of European companies in the construction and subsequent operation of Nord Stream 2 was already clearly spelled out at the level of contracts signed back in 2017, long before the start of laying the first pipes of the new gas pipeline. Nevertheless, European bureaucrats seem to believe that "more is always better than less" and are ready to squeeze the maximum benefit from the project, even if it looks like impudent cheating and rewriting of the established "rules of the game" in the midst of the work process.

The EU countries decided not to think about the reputational costs, obviously believing that the noise in the media generated by the US actions against Nord Stream 2 is quite enough to cover up the facts of gross violation of rules and norms accepted in the business community. The introduction of targeted changes in the conditions for the implementation of such large-scale infrastructure projects after the start of their implementation and the development of most of the investments looks like another perverted interpretation of "nothing personal, just business" in the European manner. However, given the anti-Russian sentiments of a number of European partners, it would be strange to expect that they will not take advantage of the current situation, all the more so having an insistent request for a complete winding down of the project coming from overseas.

As a result, the only option left for the Russian side is to act exclusively within the legal framework: Nord Stream 2 AG, being a subsidiary of Gazprom and European energy companies, will continue to appeal against court decisions in the EU, albeit without much hope of success ...

Given that the idea of ​​a "gas racketeer" clearly comes from the European establishment and was established by the EU under a special directive at the highest level, there is little chance of circumventing it. The only thing that can be noted here is that greed, as you know, does not lead to good. Hiding behind the principles of competition and a free market, European partners openly demonstrate, not only to Russia, but also to the rest of the world, that they are ready for any tricks in order to enrich themselves. This is despite the fact that Nord Stream 2 is primarily aimed at ensuring the energy security of Europe itself and is vital for its inhabitants.

By the way, it is the latter who will bear the inevitable rise in prices for Russian gas for the end consumer, as a result of the appearance of unnecessary intermediaries in the scheme, which European officials certainly cannot fail to know about. They cannot but know, but they diligently ignore it. The scheme “to create an intermediary - to raise gas prices through him - to collect super-profits from him in the form of taxes - to accuse Russians of price increases”, after all, looks much more sophisticated than a banal increase in an already high tax burden. Simple and tasteful. And there is nothing to worry about the smell. Obviously, the maxim derived by the Roman emperor Vespasian is still relevant in Europe two thousand years later: money for the EU really doesn’t smell.