Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm distanced herself Thursday from the Biden administration’s decision to waive sanctions on the company and CEO in charge of building the Russian Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline into Germany.
Granholm, testifying before the House Science Committee, said the Department of Energy was not part of the decision handled by the State Department, which cited geopolitical reasons in waiving sanctions.
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Nonetheless, Granholm said she opposes the completion of Nord Stream 2 because she said the new natural gas infrastructure project would be detrimental to her agency’s interest in curbing global emissions and combating climate change.
“One of the reasons why that pipeline is very dangerous is because it is carrying the dirtiest form of natural gas on Earth with no security on methane emissions,” Granholm said in response to questioning from Rep. Michael Waltz, a Republican from Florida. “It’s not good for our climate.”
Waltz agreed the project is “countervailing” to the Biden administration’s aggressive climate agenda and said the Energy Department should have been included in the decision-making process on sanctions.
“It was an incredibly bad decision [to waive sanctions], and I find it more disturbing your department wasn’t a key part of it,” Waltz said.
The State Department last week submitted a 90-day mandatory report to Congress that said the corporate entity in charge of Nord Stream 2 and its CEO are engaged in sanctionable activities. But it waived applying sanctions to them, citing national security and an interest in rehabbing the U.S. relationship with Germany, which views the pipeline as a commercial project and has bristled at sanctions as being in violation of its sovereignty.
Instead, the administration is sanctioning four ships and four companies, all of them Russian in origin, involved in the building of Nord Stream 2.
But in choosing not to sanction the main actor behind the pipeline, the Biden administration received criticism from Republicans and hawkish Democrats that it is being soft on Russia. It also means Nord Stream 2, already 95% complete, will be finished with construction soon.
Granholm on Thursday reiterated the Biden administration’s position that it opposes Nord Stream 2 for its potential to increase Europe’s reliance on Moscow for energy.
But she suggested the administration was in a tough spot since the project progressed during the Trump administration and was mostly finished before President Joe Biden took office.
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“Arguably, this issue about sanctioning a pipeline should have come much earlier in the construction of it,” Granholm said. “It is a good lesson for going forward. We ought to have stopped it before it was built rather than after it has been built.”
