Norway's Equinor said European Union sanctions had prevented it from providing services and equipment to inspect the damaged Nord Stream gas pipelines last year, revealing for the first time why Norwegian assistance was not forthcoming. In September, several unexplained underwater explosions ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, each more than 1,200-km-long, that link Russia and Germany across the Baltic Sea, sending methane gushing into the atmosphere.
indefinitely and as you have just seen, president biden today authorized sanctions on nord stream 2 ag and its corporate office holders. we have now taken complimentary action using our own authorities to ensure that nord stream 2 is off the table just as we said it would be. we are blocking from the global financial system two large banks that are connected to the kremlin and russian military and russian sovereign wealth can no longer trade on u.s. or european financial markets. as you know, we additionally sanctioned russian elites. those elites who are in many ways complicit. this is the beginning of our response. if putin escalates further, we will escalate further using additional sanctions and export controls, which we ve yet to unveil, but are fully prepared to implement with allies and partners across the globe. the sequence of events that
have had more leverage if these sanctions had been imposed before the pipeline was finished. you also raise a good point. the pipeline, when this administration came into office, was more than 90% complete. we have imposed sanctions under piza with a number of targets associated with this pipeline, persons and entities, but the fact is had we sanctioned nord stream 2 ag, its corporate office holders, it is far from clear that that would have kept the pipeline from going into operation. what the germans did yesterday was to ensure that the pipeline is no longer part of the equation. so by acting together with the germans, how we did, when we did, and the way in which we did, we have ensured that this is an $11 billion prize investment that is now a hunk of steal sitting at the bottom of the sea. i don t think you can prove
the pipeline itself, the project itself. you want to sanction the companies involved which involves a lot of european companies that would clearly want to push back on that. i want to ask you what all the way up means? we should be sanctioning all the way up. how far do you want to see joe biden go when he speaks 15 minutes from now? well, the principal target, the company called nord stream 2 ag, the company that owns and operates the nord stream 2 pipeline, and principal officers as well. nord stream 2 ag is a swiss company that is fully owned by the giant russian energy company. that is who biden should have sanctioned. that is who biden waved sanctions on. that is who, just a few is a go, forced a vote on the senate to impose sanctions, and i wanted a big bipartisan vote.