The daily said that the European Union should take steps to halt the project because it undermined its energy policy.
Nord Stream 2 contradicts the EU’s strategy of diversifying gas sources and reducing reliance on Russia, and it also goes against the bloc’s Third Energy Package, which aims to create a single energy market, the FT said in its editorial.
The 1,200-kilometre Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which is scheduled for completion in 2019, is expected to supply around 55 billion cubic metres of natural gas a year from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea, circumventing Poland, the Baltic states and Ukraine.
“But it makes no economic or, from the EU’s standpoint, strategic sense. It will not transport additional gas, but merely provide an alternative to the trans-Ukraine pipeline, which is only running at 50 per cent capacity,” the FT editorial said.
“Russia’s real motive for Nord Stream 2 seems to be precisely to deprive Ukraine of its transit role,” the daily said.
It added that “by offering Germany potentially cheaper energy prices and the chance to replace Ukraine as the ‘hub’ for Russian gas imports to Europe, Moscow has skilfully co-opted parts of the German political and business elite.”
According to Polish-based news website onet.pl, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who left the post in 2005, has been strongly involved in lobbying for the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas link.
In September last year, Schröder took over as chairman of the board of directors of Russian oil giant Rosneft, and he also heads the shareholders' committee of the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 companies, according to a March report by onet.pl.
US President Donald Trump in July hit out at Germany for supporting the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia across the Baltic Sea, despite opposition from some other European countries, including Poland.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has said that Nord Stream 2 is “a new hybrid weapon” aimed at the European Union and NATO.
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Source: Financial Times, PAP