Gazprom’s Nord Stream 2 and diffuse authority in the EU: managing authority challenges regarding Russian gas supplies through the Baltic Sea

ABSTRACT

This article addresses a neglected question about the effects of dispersed authority in the European Union (EU) on the EU’s ability to manage external contestations. It investigates authority challenges from two major external actors in the energy, and specifically the gas sector, and scrutinizes the management of authority conflicts at local sites in different EU states in the Baltic Sea region. The second Russian transboundary submarine gas infrastructure project Nord Stream 2 (NS2), owned and managed by a whole-owned subsidiary of the Russian state-controlled energy giant Gazprom, serves as an illustrative case study. It reveals how multiple authority conflicts at different sites and levels, and the challenges from both the Russian Federation (Russia) and the United States of America (USA), played out, and why formal adjudication has been a primary tool for the EU and several of its member states to assert their authority and manage contestations at the local, national and EU level.

KEYWORDS:

• EU energy security
• Gazprom
• Russia
• Nord Stream
• Baltic Sea
• natural gas
• energy infrastructure

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions and Jenny Fairbrass, Anna Herranz-Surrallés and Israel Solorio Sandoval for the energy that they have put into the organization of this Special Issue, as well as the UACES workshop on “Diffuse Authority and Contestation in the EU Energy Transition” in April 2018 at the University of Maastricht, and the many conference panels and energizing activities that formed part of the UACES Research Network on European Energy Policy which they initiated, and so competently and energetically led.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Aivars  Lembergs, his wife and two children were placed on the USA’s Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) sanctions list on 10 December 2019 (for details, see US Department of State 2019).

2. This permit was modified with a decision of 23 December 2019 by the BSH which approved NS2's application of 23 September 2019 for a permit to undertake the construction work for a 16.5km stretch of the pipeline in the German EEZ in early 2020. The NS2 request was submitted in response to delays caused by the permitting process in Denmark. The approval of the “winter permit” was contested by environmental protection NGOs.

3. The draft negotiating mandate of 9 June 2017 – an EU-restricted document (European Commission 2017c) – was made public by Politico.eu: European Commission (2017c) Recommendation for a Council Decision authorizing the opening of negotiations on an agreement between the European Union and the Russian Federation on the operation of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, at http://www.politico.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/NS-Draft-Mandate.pdf.

4. On 21 December 2019, the Swiss-registered pipelaying firm Allseas suspended its construction work on NS2, giving rise to speculations about whether or not, and if so when, NS2 may be completed and become operational despite the US sanctions - at at what cost.

Additional information

Funding

This research has benefitted from the author’s post-doctoral project ‘Med eller utan EU? Konsekvensen av nationella utrikespolitiska val för Europeiska unionens effektivitet som global aktör’ (2011–2014), funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR) Dnr 435-2011-1106, and the author’s Research Fellowship in the Special Research Programme on International Studies at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI, 2014-2018), financed by the Swedish Foreign Ministry.