Senate may approve bill on fighting Russia’s energy influence soon

WASHINGTON, Dec 5 (PRIME) -- The U.S. Senate plans to approve a bill soon to fight Russia’s influence on European energy, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy said late on Wednesday at a conference organized by the Atlantic Council.

“I don't know what the final outcome will be on Nord Stream 2, but I am doubtful of our ability to stop it in its tracks given how far it has gone…And so, we need to have some other answers for what is going to be a continued effort for Russia to try to ply other nations into its orbit through its energy bounty,” he said.

“And so I'm hopeful that in the next week we are going to pass a bill in the Foreign Relations Committee, that has already passed in the House of Representatives, to set up a new (U.S.) $1 billion energy independence financing mechanism in the federal government to be used in places like Eastern Europe, so that they don't have to be reliant on gas pipelines coming in from Russia.”

Murphy wrote the bill together with Senator Ron Johnson, and he hopes that it will pass the Senate “very, very soon.”

The Nord Stream-2 project envisages construction of two lines of a natural gas pipeline with an annual capacity of up to 55 billion cubic meters, running from the Russian shore to Germany under the Baltic Sea. Russian gas giant Gazprom is implementing the project together with Germany’s E.ON and BASF, Royal Dutch Shell, OMV, and France’s Engie. The length of the pipeline’s route exceeds 1,200 kilometers.

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