Russia is free to use its own pipe-laying vessel Akademik Cherskiy to lay the last 160 kilometers of the Nord Stream gas pipeline through the Baltic Sea.
The Danish environmental agency granted approval on Monday for a ship of such large dimensions to use anchors during its operations, as there is no old chemical munitions from the Second World War left in that sea area.
Threatening American economic sanctions had earlier forced the Swiss pipe-laying company Allseas to stop the project at the Russian pipeline, causing the only large pipe-laying vessel available at the time to withdraw.
The Dutch-Swiss offshore company Allseas of Edward Heerema withdrew the largest pipe-layer in the world, the Pioneering Spirit, from the project at the end of December. By then, it had already laid most of the double pipeline with a length of 1,224 kilometers. Following this, the Russians had their own pipe-layer sail all the way around from their Asian coastal area near Kamchatka to Europe to finish the job.
Within a few weeks, the US Congress may pass new sanction legislation against dozens of European companies still involved in the construction of the gas pipeline between Russia and Germany. Among these are Shell and the major Dutch offshore companies Boskalis and Van Oord.
The United States is doing everything to prevent the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from being completed, arguing it would make Europe too dependent on Russian gas. Russia accuses the US of trying to protect its own gas exports. That the Americans would not stop at threats became clear at the end of last year when the first sanctions came into effect, immediately halting the project.
The head of the Russian gas supplier Gazprom, Alexei Miller, said that the pipeline would be completed regardless. In January, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that the work would be finished and the gas pipeline put into operation by the end of this year or in the first quarter of 2021.