In an interview with the Slovak edition of EuaActiv special envoy of the US State Department on international energy issues Amos Hochstein said that the implementation of the project “Northern stream-2” may “allow the Ukrainian economy to collapse”.
In his opinion, the construction of a pipeline bypassing Ukraine will lead to the fact that “the shaky economy of this country will lose an income of $2 billion.” “At the same time as the international community tries to help Ukraine,” said Hochstein.
The official suggested that Ukraine will not be able to cope with the loss of significant revenue, and its economy will collapse.
According to Hochstein, may suffer and Slovakia, through which there is transit gas. “I don’t think Russia wants to harm Slovakia, but I think about this in Moscow do not think” – he said.
State Department officials said that participating in the project “Northern stream-2” is a close U.S. ally, and Washington is discussing with the Berlin problem to the political component of the project.
The second branch of the gas pipeline “Nord stream”, laid under the Baltic sea to increase the volume of gas supplies to Germany twice, to 110 billion cubic meters per year. In March, eight EU members have opposed the project. Among them — the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Lithuania. The heads of the governments of these countries stated that the implementation of the project has geopolitical risk.
