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In reply to the discussion: Should the United States be supporting the new government of Ukraine? [View all]okaawhatever
(9,560 posts)way of sowing economic catastrophes in the future.
The parent company of Nord Stream was chartered in Switzerland for their secrecy laws. The Managing Director is Mathias Warning, a former Stasi officer who may have worked with Putin when Putin was KGB stationed in East Germany. The project was pushed through ten days before the German election by Shroeder. Immediately after Shroeder left office he took up a million dollar per year consultant gig for Nord Stream. The Prime Minister of Finland took a consulting post with Nord Stream as well. It's long been accepted in diplomatic circles that Shroeder gave Russia every bit of intel that the US and UK shared with him. (probably why Merkel's phone was bugged)
From Natural Gas Europe:
Russia's Gazprom holds 51% of Nord Stream, while German energy companies E.On Ruhrgas and Wintershall each hold 15.5%. Dutch company Nederlandse Gasunie and France's GDF Suez hold 9% each. Downstream from this gas supply, the price of which will be set by these players with no need to say who pays how much, except in carefully written corporate releases, the goal is value adding and supply to captive markets inside Europe, such as gas import dependent Britain which decided to exploit its North Sea reserves so fast the UK ran out of gas - fast.(Note: the purpose of this is to increase prices to the UK in addition to giving Putin the ability to cut off energy sources in the future)
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the entire project was corrupt, just like anything else that comes our of Putin's government. He's build 3 pipelines and they're all similar. This one has over 50 sub-companies under the parent company umbrella. All of which are chartered in countries with strict secrecy laws so no one knows how much money is going through them or who it goes to.
Yes, part of the pipeline's purpose is to by-pass countries like Ukraine so that Russia can cut them off without affecting supplies to Europe. Yes, part of the pipeline's purpose is to make Europe overly dependent on Russian gas. Putin wants Ukraine back. Not only do they need Ukraine's food to remain food independent they also are limited in the amount of oil and gas they can export without the pipelines through Ukraine. There's also no coincidence that Putin kept prices high in Ukraine until they needed relief and then offered it in exchange for signing a 25 year extension on Russia's naval base in Crimea. Putin's long term plans involve placing Europe in such an energy dependent state if he moves militarily they won't be effective in fighting back. Germany is already too dependent on Russia. I think that is why Angela Merkel made such a push towards renewable energy. There are many far right interests in Germany that want to align with Russia and are making big bucks with projects like these.
http://www.naturalgaseurope.com/germany-russia-energy-diplomacy
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