The company that promotes the Nord Stream 2 pipeline has proposed a third possible route for the pipeline to be located through Danish territorial waters, in an attempt to overcome the objections raised by the Copenhagen authorities over this project, Reuters reports.

The Nord Stream 2 AG Consortium has already submitted to the Danish authorities the plans for two possible routes to the southern Baltic island of Bornholm in the exclusive economic zone of Denmark, the first of these routes being presented more than two years ago, but last month was asked to present a third option.

Nord Stream 2 AG representatives said that this request could only be seen as a deliberate attempt to delay the completion of the project. „Regardless of its own legal assessment, Nord Stream 2 AG is bound to submit its third proposal,” the company said in a press release quoted by Agerpres.

„Our preliminary analysis is that this third route is more appropriate on the basis of several environmental and safety parameters,” said Morten Christensen, a Danish Energy Agency advisor, in response to the criticism from Nord Stream 2 AG.

The North Stream 2 pipeline is being criticized by the US, which accuses Germany of increasing its dependence of Russian natural gas as well as several states in Eastern Europe, the Baltic Sea and Northern Europe, who fear that Nord Stream 2 will increase the EU’s dependency of Moscow.