display
Berlin (dpa) - Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) is said to have proposed a billion-dollar deal to the USA last year to prevent sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the Baltic Sea.
This emerges from documents that the German Environmental Aid (DUH) made public on Tuesday.
Accordingly, on August 7, 2020, Scholz is said to have offered the then US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a personal letter to promote the import of liquid natural gas from the US with up to one billion euros if the US government in return for sanctions against the Baltic Sea pipeline Nord Stream 2 waived
The Federal Ministry of Finance did not want to comment on the announcement on Tuesday.
DUH Federal Managing Director Sascha Müller-Kränner spoke of a “scandal” and a “dirty deal at the expense of third parties”.
From the letter in English, which is available to the German Press Agency, it emerges that the Federal Government, in cooperation with the United States, wanted to promote the construction of liquid gas terminals in Wilhelmshaven and Brunsbüttel.
At the same time, there is great concern in Berlin about the threatened US sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 natural gas project, it is said in several places.
Germany expects the USA to enable the unhindered construction and operation of Nord Stream 2 and also to withdraw the sanction laws that have already been passed.
For this, the federal government is ready to import liquid gas from the USA.
“Zeit” reported on some of the contents of the letter last year.
display
The Federal Finance Minister himself did not comment on the letter on Tuesday.
From government circles it was said that the federal government was "in contact with the US government on the US sanctions and the sanction threats regarding Nord Stream 2".
These conversations are confidential.
Government spokesman Steffen Seibert also pointed this out in September of last year, shortly after the publication in “Die Zeit”.
At the same time, Seibert had emphasized that natural gas was “an important energy source” for Germany and that liquid gas - also known as LNG (liquified natural gas) - played a “certain role in achieving the national, European and climate targets agreed under the Paris climate protection agreement” .
The expansion of the liquid gas infrastructure in Germany is also anchored in the coalition agreement.
Sharp criticism of the Federal Finance Minister's approach came from the opposition.
"It is completely unacceptable that Olaf Scholz is trying to gild US fracking gas in Germany with tax money and at the same time want to buy Nord Stream 2 free from US sanctions," wrote the budgetary spokesman for the Greens in the Bundestag, Sven-Christian Kindler, in a statement.
The left-wing politician Sevim Dagdelen called it “downright criminal, as Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz offered billions in tax money for the subsidized construction of LNG terminals”.
"You don't make dirty secret deals with brazen blackmailers, even if they're in the White House or in the US Senate," said Dagdelen.
display
Deutsche Umwelthilfe and other environmental activists have been fighting against both the construction of liquid gas terminals in Germany and the completion of Nord Stream 2 for a long time.
The Baltic Sea pipeline will one day transport 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Russia to Germany.
The USA and several EU countries are against the almost completed billion-dollar project because they fear that it will become too dependent on Russian gas.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210209-99-369902 / 2