Operator Nord Stream, a joint venture between Gazprom, Wintershall, and E.ON Ruhrgas, says it plans to issue an environmental impact study for the project in the summer.
The foreign ministers of Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, and Sweden, who signed the document, apparently don’t consider this adequate. They argue that because the Baltic Sea is “extremely vulnerable”, the environmental impact study should be conducted by European Union environmental regulators independent of the operating company.
Nord Stream spokesman Jens Mueller said he suspects political concerns, not environmental ones, spurred the document. “I would never say that anyone is trying to cause problems, but there seems to be a certain contradiction between the environmental and the political aspects of this,” Mr Mueller said. “I think the political concerns are stronger here.”
For months, the project has worried several European countries who have concerns about increasing Europe’s dependence on Russian energy. Warsaw and the other Baltic states have complained the pipeline purposely skirts their countries, whose relations with Russia have soured considerably over recent months.