OREANDA-NEWS. The head of Wintershall Dea, which is owned by businessman Mikhail Fridman, Mario Meren likened the US dissatisfaction with Germany’s cooperation with the USSR in gas supplies when the gas-pipes agreement was concluded with the situation now unfolding around the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline project.

Meren noted that the "deal of the century" between Germany and the USSR, concluded in 1970, caused skepticism from the United States, and President Richard Nixon was considering the possibility of imposing sanctions on the energy project.

But in 1982, when plans appeared for a new gas pipeline from Siberia to Europe through the territory of Poland, the United States expressed a strong protest, Meren writes. As an example of such opposition, he, in particular, cites the idea of a senator from Alaska, who proposed Europe to abandon Soviet gas in favor of gas, which is produced in this state and demanded the withdrawal of American troops from West Germany, “because the Russians could turn off there at any time electricity”, Meren writes.

Nord Stream-2 is a project of a gas pipeline passing along the bottom of the Baltic Sea to Germany, including through the territorial waters of Finland, Sweden and Denmark. It's planned that its capacity will be 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year. Its operator is a subsidiary of Gazprom, Nord Stream 2.