The German-Russian company Nord Stream 2 declared insolvency after Germany suspended certification of the gas pipeline in retaliation for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The company filed for bankruptcy and laid off its 106 employees, the chief economic officer of the Swiss canton of Zug, where it is based, said on Tuesday.
“We have been informed today [Tuesday] that this company could not continue (…), it had to declare bankruptcy and its employees received the dismissal letter,” said the person in charge, Thalman-Gut.
Nord Stream 2 was unable to present a social plan “because it is insolvent,” he added.
The construction of this gas pipeline was defended for years by the former head of the German government Angela Merkel, despite pressure from the United States that saw it as a means by Russian President Vladimir Putin to exercise energy blackmail on the leading European economic power.
The maneuvers to prepare for the invasion of Ukraine and its completion last week finally sealed the fate of this pipeline, which was soon to start operating, with a transport capacity of 55,000 million cubic meters of gas per year.
Germany announced at the beginning of last week the suspension of this pharaonic work with which it hoped to carry out its energy transition. And on Wednesday the 23rd, when Russian troops were clearly preparing to attack, US President Joe Biden announced that he would impose sanctions on the gas pipeline and its administrators.
Nord Stream’s parent company is Russian energy giant Gazprom.
The 1,230 km submarine pipeline was completed at the end of 2021, with an investment of 11,000 million dollars, but was awaiting German certification to start operating.
This million-dollar project now “is nothing more than a pile of steel, at the bottom of the sea,” said then the spokesman for US diplomacy, Ned Price.
