The North Atlantic Alliance plans to build a new pipeline to provide the eastern flank with fuel in the event of a war on its territory. This is reported Spiegel.
According to the publication, since the Cold War there were two fuel pipelines that extended to Germany, but none of them reached the eastern part of the country, which was then under the influence of the Soviet bloc.
After a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, NATO decided to review its fuel infrastructure and plan to build additional pipelines, as the existing system is limited to supplies reaching only Germany. As part of this project, the possibility of expanding existing pipelines to Eastern Europe is considered: one of them will potentially continue to the Czech Republic, and the other to Poland, while there is an option to integrate both networks into a single system.
According to preliminary estimates, the total cost of the implementation of this large-scale project may reach 21 billion euros, and its full implementation may take 20 to 25 years. Among the main challenges cited in the publication are uncertainty caused by changes in US leadership, as well as possible opposition from local populations living near future construction sites.
We will remind that the issue of modernization of NATO’s fuel networks is not on the agenda for the first time: Poland has already expressed support for this idea. In addition, representatives of the Netherlands, Germany and Poland signed an agreement aimed at simplifying bureaucratic procedures for the prompt transfer of troops and weapons from the North Sea region to the eastern flank of the Alliance.
