Grigory Pasko: Pitching Nord Stream to the Finns

The moderator at the presentation was the leader of the Finnish Green Party, European Parliament deputy Heidi Hautala (on 7 June she will most likely once again be elected. At any rate, I wish her success in this).  The film was shown, followed by a Q&A discussion with Marti Poutanen (Finnish Ministry of the Environment) the Estonian politicians Tapani Veistola and Paul Lettens, and several NGO representatives.

The first to speak, of course, was Sass. He said that one point of view predominates in the film; that the project is good on all counts - in particular, it is going to save Europe from that nasty coal, because the electric power generating stations of Germany are going to convert to the «green fuel» - gas. He also said that the company Nord Stream AG is an unprecedentedly open company, just about the most open company in the whole history of the existence of humanity. He also said that neither Gerhard Schroeder nor Paavo Lipponen are lobbyists for the project.

When it was my turn to speak, I said that:

1) it is genuinely laughable for me to hear that Schroeder and Lipponen - are not lobbyists for the project. Then what were they hired for?

2) I asked Sebastian to stop calling gas a «green fuel» going forward - he might offend environmentalists;

3) the openness of the company, unfortunately, has its limitations.

The next day, I and some friends from Swedish and Finnish television took a trip to the city of Kotka. We came to the site where a plant is being built for the fabrication of the cement blocks needed for laying Nord Stream's pipes along the Baltic seabed. Not far from there - staging areas for storing the actual pipes.

Representatives of the French company EUPEC allowed us onto the site only after a phone call to Sass in my name. They categorically refused to give us their names, however, even though they were written right on their helmets (I particularly liked the name T.Tonnensen). They refused to be photographed. To all questions, even the most innocent ones (what's your name, what will the plant be producing, how can we see a sample of your output, at least on a photo, etc.), they refused to respond. But they did show us the pipe unloading wharf. They were being offloaded from a vessel by the name of Don-3, flying the Maltese flag. There are already hundreds of kilometers of pipe accumulated on the wharfs in the port of Kotka.

- I ask the representative of the French company what is the length of one of these pipes?

- That's a question for the company Nord Stream (NS).

- What is the weight of one pipe?

- Ask NS.

- What is the thickness of one pipe?

- Ask NS.

- Where are the pipes from?

- Ask NS.

- How long have you been keeping watch over these pipes?

- Ask NS.

My dear friend Sebastian!  You can understand why it is difficult for journalists to agree that Nord Stream AG is the most open company in the world ... perhaps compared to Gazprom there is an improvement, but projects of this scope merit a discussion with society.

In talking with these people I was reminded of the words of Garry Kasparov about how the project may never happen. After what I saw in Kotka, I can say: the project can not NOT happen. Because hundreds of millions, if not billions, of euros have already been pumped into it pitching it, at least from a politcial angle. I think that going forward, the initiators of the project and the owners - the recipients of Russian gas can only put in yet more billions, because this will already turn out to be cheaper. The project will happen, at any cost, and it seems that for the backers, among them Vladimir Putin, no price is too high.

Otherwise, what to do with the two thousand kilometers of pipe of the Gryazovets-Vyborg pipeline already buried in the ground and the two and a half thousand kilometers of pipes already prepared for the underwater branches?

...By the way, it was being said even before Putin's early June visit to Helsinki that he was coming to - lobby for the project. The «not a lobbyist» Lipponen would no doubt be someplace right nearby.

[The above article was written before Vladimir Putin's visit to Helsinki, but we were unfortunately unable to post it until now. As a result, Grigory Pasko has asked us to add the following afterword.]

At a press-conference in Helsinki, V.Putin somberly joked about how the premier of Finland, it seemed, knows the problems with the Nord Stream gas pipeline better than even HE HIMSELF does. VVP got the impression that the Finnish premier had personally touched and felt every single mine buried under the sea along the pipeline's route.

I think that Putin knows about Nord Stream's problems no worse than his Finnish colleague. It's another matter that the Finnish colleague is not as deeply enmeshed in all kinds of behind-the-scenes secret little games, which is why he blurted out a number no one had ever said aloud before - 31 one mines that need to be disarmed. About the mines, Putin pretended to just laugh it off. By he did say the main thing, as far as he's concerned: construction of the pipeline needs to be accelerated. That's exactly why he came to Helsinki in the first place, after all. And this explains his little scare tactic in the form of information that transit of gas through Ukraine could stop as early as the end of June. As to his words about "any route" - lies. Because he really means only ONE route - under the sea. Overland routes are categorically not being looked at. I think that later VVP is going to fly to Stockholm to fast-talk the Swedes, and then - to Turkey: to get the second branch of the Blue Stream moving.