By Julia Payne
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The lower court at the European Court of Justice has dismissed an attempt by Russia’s Nord Stream 2 to contest the EU’s unbundling rules on gas transmission pipelines, the court said in a statement on Wednesday.
In 2019, the EU amended its gas directive to extend its rules to third country gas pipelines. Nord Stream 2 is a subsidiary of Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom.
“Those rules provide, in particular, for the unbundling of transmission systems from those of production and supply, as well as for third party access to transmission systems,” the court said in a statement.
The court found that Nord Stream 2 (NS2) could have foreseen it would not meet EU criteria when it was building the pipeline, which was completed in 2021. The NS2 pipelines never exported any gas and one of its pipes, along with the operating Nord Stream 1 (NS1) pipelines, were blown up in September 2022.
The pipelines were built to pump 110 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas per year across the Baltic Sea to Germany but never hit that level. NS1 pumped over 59 bcm in 2021.
“The Court explains that Nord Stream 2 AG made and continued its investments in its gas pipeline during a period within which it had no assurance that EU law would continue not to be applied to its pipeline,” the statement said.
“Nord Stream 2 AG could foresee that the EU institutions and a number of Member States… would use their power in order to extend the internal market rules.”
Gazprom, the owner of Nord Stream 2, has not immediately replied to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Julia Payne, additional reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin in Moscow; Editing by Gareth Jones and Alex Richardson)
