Nord Stream 2, the Switzerland-based company behind the gas pipeline project, has reached an agreement with its creditors to restructure its debt, a Swiss court in Zug said on Friday.
Friday, May 9, was the deadline set by the court for Nord Stream 2 to restructure its debt and repay smaller creditors, or be declared bankrupt.
Bankruptcy was avoided thanks to the debt restructuring deal announced by the court today.
Nord Stream 2, an $11-billion project to carry Russian natural gas from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea following the Nord Stream route, was built at the end of the 2010s. However, the pipeline was never put into operation after Germany axed the certification process in early 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Russia, for its part, shut down Nord Stream 1 indefinitely in early September of 2022, claiming an inability to repair gas turbines because of the Western sanctions.
Gas leaks in each of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea were discovered at the end of September 2022.
Debates on the pipelines continue despite the fact that they haven’t shipped any gas to Germany for more than two and a half years.
In March this year, the then German economy and energy minister Robert Habeck said that ideas to resurrect the Nord Stream gas pipelines from Russia to Germany were the “wrong direction of discussion”. Speculation has intensified that a revival of the pipelines could be a part of a deal for the end of the war in Ukraine.
The EU, however, is seeking to end the bloc’s dependency on Russian energy, and unveiled a roadmap this week to phase out imports of Russian oil, gas, and nuclear energy by 2027.
But Slovakia and Hungary have criticized the EU’s plan, claiming that it is “economic suicide” that will hurt the EU more than Russia.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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