The CEO of the Austrian oil and gas company OMV, Rainer Seele, has urged the European Union to protect its companies from the United States’ ongoing attempts to dictate energy policy and accompanying threats of sanctions over the North Stream 2 pipeline, which will bring Russian gas to Europe once completed.
“I would like to hear whether or not Europe is going to protect the independence of their own countries when somebody else would like to dictate to Europe what kind of energy policy they should follow”, Seele told the Financial Times newspaper on Thursday.
Nord Stream 2 is a joint venture of Russian gas giant Gazprom and five European companies, including OMV. The pipeline is expected to deliver 55 billion cubic meters (1.9 trillion cubic feet) of Russian natural gas annually to the European Union through the Baltic Sea