And who actually gains from this in the long run... Certainly not Germany or Russia... Should make it pretty clear. It could be UK as tradition of breaking down Europe, but they are having enough issues that the timing is entirely wrong... I don't think China cares, so maybe Arabs, but I doubt. Only really leaves USA and we know what they have historically been up to.
Poland benefits but doesn't have the operational capacity. US can't really expect to sell much gas to Europe regardless, so if it was then it would be for anti-Russia reasons, which seems like a stretch. Objectively the funniest possiblity is that some cargo ship dragged it's anchor across miles of ocean and a captain is very very worried right now
Well obviously "doesn't have the operational capacity" was paired with a large but finite amount of benefit. If God came down and asked Duda if he'd like for the pipeline to blow up, that's one thing. But you also risk international condemnation if you screw it up and get caught. You could blow up a pipeline, but there's no practice round.
Well, the US literally did have a practice round, but I don't think their benefit outweighs the potential backlash either. Russia really doesn't risk backlash, but on the first order seems more harmed than not. Maybe it would force Europe to reckon with a winter without Russian gas before the winter comes? Seems pretty flimsy.
Sure there is. The Polish Navy could practice finding the pipeline as much as they want. They could also practice blowing things up underwater as much as they want. Doing both at once isn't much more of a problem.
Also I think the backlash issue is overstated, particularly for America. What would Germany do, rage-quit NATO? Not a chance. Get pissy about it but do nothing? Very likely. Bury the evidence so they don't have to explain it to their public? Also very likely. In this regard, America has much more leeway than Poland.
Is there any plausible way a navy ship could have blown up the pipeline? Everyone knew about it pretty quickly, no? Like before a ship got more than 30 miles away? I assumed it would have been done by a small team of saboteurs on a plausibly deniable vessel, but I'm not an expert. What's the consensus?
I don't think rage-quitting NATO would be the concern, but a trade war. The US bombing the pipeline is like a tariff applied outside their borders, you can't firmly discount the possibility that someone would take issue with it. Is it likely? Honestly I doubt it, but for the US to benefit western Europe would definitely need to crack come winter (which is by no means guaranteed), and it would be have to be easier to import from America than from Russia even if they did, which isn't obvious. If the US had the capacity to sell enough gas to Europe to profit from this, they wouldn't be worried about energy-hungry nations breaking the embargo!
I have no doubt anyone north of Ted Kaczynski in operational capacity could blow up the pipeline, which certainly includes Poland. But you need not just to blow up a pipeline, but definitely not get caught. It was a hostile action primarily against western European nations Poland has good relationships with. The public finding out would not go well.
You're implicitly assuming that the destruction of the pipeline was an imperial act of aggression, rather than a response to imperial aggression. I don't think that's a sound assumption.
There is only one Empire on this planet, and that is the US. Since the collapse of the British Empire, there's no other country that falls so perfectly into the definition of an empire.
US / UK interests are well enough aligned that if one had a motive, the other might have done it for them as a favor in return for some other unknown favor. And whatever issues the UK is having now, it would not have precluded doing something as easy as this.
The UK is not my first or even second suspicion, but it could have been them.
Subjects selling gas? I don't think he's implying a populist uprising to champion free market principles.
Gazprom executives may wish to resume their lives of absurd luxury yachting around the Mediterranean. They probably don't enjoy being sanctioned and deprived of the luxury they think they're entitled to.
I have a hard time with it as well. It harms so many parties, it just doesn't make sense to be state-sponsored.
But at the same time, this requires some real resources to execute something like this. I can imagine mid-sized corporations having access to the resources to do it, but not without leaving a significant paper trail.
I don't imagine terrorist organizations have that kind of funding.
The US is a good candidate, but I don't see how it hurts Russia more than it hurts the rest of Europe. It'd be unusually Machiavellian for even us, if it was the US.
> The US is a good candidate, but I don't see how it hurts Russia more than it hurts the rest of Europe. It'd be unusually Machiavellian for even us, if it was the US.
It doesn't matter if it hurts Europe, if it benefits the USA. The capital never cares about the colonies, and weakening own colonies and enemies, while at she same times strengthening themselves, is a valid strategy. Machiavellian or not, doesn't matter.
Long term, Europe is bound to be dependable on LNG gas imports from the USA. Many companies are shutting down in Europe and considering moving to the place with much cheaper energy.
> The US is a good candidate, but I don't see how it hurts Russia more than it hurts the rest of Europe.
How do you calculate the hurt? Absolute hurt, or relative hurt? If I take $20 from you and $10 from a homeless man, I've taken more from you in absolute terms but more from the homeless man in relative terms.
The US and EU have collectively given Ukraine something like ~$100B in military aid. If they wanted someone to sabotage the pipeline (And they are the elephant in the room, with the most to lose if said pipeline is turned back on) they certainly could find the resources to do it.
The US finally has a coalition against Russian aggression in Europe, that is key to helping Ukraine win the war. Why would they throw this away on a stupid sabotage operation?
Don't cut yourself on Hanlon's razor. Its frequent success comes from an excess of stupidity in the world, not from a shortage of malice. Kids learn how to "play dumb" before they can even string complete sentences together and they only get better. Hanlon's razor is often correct, but always exploitable.
Hanlon's razor is foolish; every who's up to no good knows the "pretend it was an accident" trick. Children figure it out.
Not assuming malice is a good policy in ordinary everyday situations, but the razor lacks that nuance and says to Never assume malice, which is going too far.
Just because it has a wikipedia article doesnt mean is isn't nonsense, but first we must agree on what we think the heuristic is. We observe a event that is harmful to us, and we have to decide whether that behavior was caused by a rational agent.
Hanlons Razor, as you are using it, says that is usually not the case.
There is a reason for the heuristic to hold for a time after a big change in human society. This usually corresponds to a time when the peoppe in power don't understand what was going on. They had strategies that were successful in the previous age and those strategies are obsolete now. The first usage seems to be approximately in the time of Napoleon, when gunpowder fundamentally changed feudalism. For another example, compared to its younger brother, World War 1 could have had Yakety Sax as its soundtrack.
There is also a really compelling machanism by which Hanlon's razor fails to apply. Eventually it is the case that competent, selfish strategies prevail and proliferate. They don't go away once they exist, they just accumulate. Eventually, behavior you encounter can be most easily explained by deducing the optimal strategy for the agents involved. This is roughly how biologists operate, and they only study things with comparatively low intelligence.
It should be noted that Hanlon's razor is, as a rule, completely incompatible with the equally popular Chesterton's fence heuristic. If incompetence is likely the correct explanation for the fence, then its fine to get rid of.
There's no argument for "running on the opposite direction". The OP piece doesn't meet any reasonable standard to be considered an intellectual submission and hence the terse response.
Highly speculative opinion not grounded in fact and blatantly pushing a conclusion . . . what else can you say? Why is this even submitted to HN? A conversation starter?
The random blog brings up a theory, the mainstream media is already pointing finger towards russia, it's pretty clear which side makes assumptions without proof.
I hope that's not the outtake you got from my comment.
The phrase "Trust me, bro" is not meant to indicate the press or any entity is above fact and evidence based reporting.
If this was a story in the New York Times, it would be in the opinion section. There is an expectation in intellectual reporting to have a factual basis to draw a conclusion upon.
I'm annoyed that the blog linked here simply starts off with such a broad, presumptive take citing nothing but the opinions of some stranger on the internet and starts to make such strong conclusions.
I would say the same thing if this was reported in the "Establishment press" or anywhere else. As should anyone reading this.
Being critical of non factual reporting should be encouraged regardless of where the story is published.
To be honest, people dont seem to care too much who did it. It was russia: what are they gonna do, sanction them? It was the US: what are russians gonna do, go to war with the west?
Whoever did this, they solved a Godrian knot. Imagine going into winter with one pipeline being the lifeline of europe.
[My conspiracy theory: this was a arranged via secret negotiations between US and Russia. They want an end to the war with russia cut off from the western system and europe out of the picture. Putin gets pyrrhic "victory" and a golden bridge with the new republics, and Ukraine joins NATO, with nukes pointed at russia]
That was never a possible outcome. Pipelines transiting Belarus and Ukraine remain operational and AFAIK in-service.
Who did it does matter. If Russia didn't self-sabotage they may feel some obligation to retaliate proportionally against someone else's energy infrastructure.
> If Russia didn't self-sabotage they may feel some obligation to retaliate proportionally against someone else's energy infrastructure.
Why do they have to retaliate against the energy infrastructure? I read some article saying it would be much easier for them to cut off some major internet cables between North America and Europe.
Seems plausible to me. It's probably much easier to do without trace and leave the enemy without a hard proof that they did it.
> Pipelines transiting Belarus and Ukraine remain operational and AFAIK in-service.
The Yamal pipeline (to Poland via Belarus) has been shut down since May. The other pipelines through Belarus and Ukraine (Northern Lights, Soyuz, Brotherhood) all appear to still be operational.
Unqualified opinions are cheap. This random internet guy thinks sabotage is unlikely on the Nord Stream incident based on what is published on news websites? This has a weight of exactly zero.
The opinion this is cheap talk might be a shitty one?
Gas line works fine for years, suddenly during regional conflict it goes tits up?
A dying country whose leadership seems intent on putting it out of its misery sending its potential fathers to a meat grinder, a history of stupid big picture choices, angry at the world for not letting it conquer it might partake in environmental sabotage.
It’s a lot less on the nose than nukes; if we can’t have imperialist nation state, no one can!
The holocaust is proof of human indifference to each other’s existence. What do a bunch of old turds care about intentional environmental destruction?
Gas line works for years, then 6 months after removal of western technical experts and ending of cooperation with technicians running west end of pipeline (which article stressed were critical to clearing plugs like these safely) it goes tits up.
Putin is not going to blow up his biggest leverage over Europe during a cold winter, its his only chance at getting them to reduce support for Ukraine.
The weight of the random-press aka "we don't know it, but the CIA already told us that could happen in the future, and therefore it must be true and it was russia" sound's like a big minus weight.
No, the opposite of pointing, just saying don't trust any site until truth is out in around 20 years.
US/UK had big interests in a dead Olaf Palme (not saying the US/UK did it, that would be ridiculous...the US/UK killing a European PM..pfff) and a Sweden who is against the USSR instead of making bridges between europe and the soviets.
My first question would be is random internet guy from one of the most likely suspects if this were sabotage? If so, their opinion is probably like many such opinions and based more on projection and defensive posturing than anything else.
Assuming everything on the modern internet is some form of propaganda is safer than the alternative of believing you can find unbiased and well grounded analysis for free.
Unless one of the leaks caused all the others, it seems like a hell of a coincidence for them to all happen on the same day by chance after sitting there for years.
The pipes are 4 inches of steel wrapped in 6 inches of concrete. It's hard to see that being something that would rupture easily by accident. Especially 4 at a time.
4cm, not 4inches, IIRC. Plus concrete, again 6cm, not 6inches. Still massive.
The weight ist 13 tonnes steel + 13 tonnes concrete per segment, IIRC, diameter is 1.1m and segment length is 13m. Steel is ~7kg/dm³ => You can now calculate the wall thickness.
Even in hostile waters, why not? Doing it this way does send a message and sows uncertainty, i.e. was whoever did this able to place explosives on the second one under the eyes of several militaries?) and can be accomplished by using timed fuses.
There is at least one factual inaccuracy here--Nordstream 1 was not cut off after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It was running at more or less usual capacity until early June, when the flow was cut by about 60%. It was then shut off in July for regular yearly maintenance window. It returned at 40% capacity for a while, before being slowed to 20% capacity in late July, and then shut off again at the end of August. So Nordstream 1 has only been not moving for a little less than a month at the time of the explosion.
While I think accidental failure of the Nordstream pipeline is an underrated explanation, such a glaring factual inaccuracy makes me skeptical of the viability of the specific theory espoused in this article.
I dunno, I always thought it made it more likely. Funding for NS2 has dried up so whose going to bother leaving their nice warm hut to go do required maintenance?
We have no reason to assume we even know all the possibilities. Neither Russia nor NATO are monoliths. We don't even know potentially how many actors we should take into account.
And he is talking about the diesel effect. This implies the presence of an oxidiser like oxygen. Yes, CH₄ + 2 H₂O does react to CO₂ and 4 H₂, but not under high pressure and it is endothermic, so nope. And this pipeline has an diameter of more than a metre, so this plug must be quite large. Yes, the pressure was 105 bar which is more than enough for the creating of these clathrates but this must be a lot of water o.o…anyway, I am not an expert, but this articles sounds a lot like he took a lot of knowledge from here: https://petrowiki.spe.org/Hydrate_plug_removal. But I like the idea. An deliberate attack is somewhat unsound for me, I do not see a reason for Russia to destroy both pipelines. NS1: ok, Russia tried to pressure Germany to open NS2 anyway. All 4 of them at different spots? At almost the same time? And if they maintained them all simultaneously (Why so fast? They have time now.), if one broke, they should have stopped anything on the other one, which exploded 17 h later. And this articles assumes a lot of incompetence on the Russian side…I do not buy this.
This whole Nordstream case sounds feels like a James Bond style movie when a random news plays in the background while the protagonist is doing his business and then in two cutscenes we see cities burning.
Watching these movies is definitely fun, but living 1000km from a war zone is somewhat worrisome.
Anyways, I'll move finishing my bug-out-bag higher on my todo list.
I don’t think I have anything to add to the other comments here. Maybe the 1st key thing though is to recognize thath RU would absolutely false flag their own infra to create chaos and pressure on EU. Putin started his presidential career with a likely false flag that killed civilians. Blowing up NS1&2 is an obvious threat against Norwegian offshore and pipeline infra which now critical for EU.
The idea that Putin or Biden would do this is so ludicrous as to be dismissable out of hand.
Putin needs the revenues from these pipelines once hostilities end. He was likely extremely hopeful Europe would cave this winter and he could use them as leverage.
Biden has finally gotten a coalition in Europe to take Russia's aggressions seriously and their combined efforts have Ukraine making great progress in winning the war.
So far the most plausible theory is that Russia sabotaged the pipelines for two reasons [1]: 1) to claim force majeure and avoid massive penalties Gazprom would have to pay for the breach of contract (we are talking billions here; now they just blame the West and good luck proving in courts who actually did it); 2) to further blackmail and coerce the European nations (particularly Germany and Italy) who depend on Russian gas to stop supporting Ukraine.
Your theory just doesn't check out. With the pipelines destroyed, Russia can't blackmail the EU with energy as easily as they could before. And why would they destroy infrastructure that they poured billions into when they could have just turned off the taps any time they pleased?
The pipelines now being destroyed is a really bad thing for Russia, a worse thing for the EU and a great situation for the USA (and Poland, who just opened a pipeline). Both Biden and Nuland have both publicly threatened to take out the pipelines. Ukraine has also lobbied hard against them.
I mean, it very well could be the Russians. They certainly have the capability - but I'm struggling to see the logic behind cutting off their dealmaking hand.
This just doesn't make sense. The pipeline's current and future value was worth more than any breach of contract. It's really just basic math and grade school logic.
Somebody didn't want Germany making a deal with Russia after the reality of winter sets in.
Doesn't it? [1][2] suggest that Germany paid $25bn for fossil fuels to Russia in 2021, where a large portion of this must be gas. The cost of building Nord Stream 2 was less than €10bn and some of that was probably covered by Germans. So, it might cost something similar to one year supply. Keep in mind that gas contacts are often long-term.
Also, you assume the pipelines are irreparable, but we don't know that.
Legally, you can’t just invade another country but that didn’t stop Russia and it has never stopped the US. Do you think Russia is going to care about the legality of debts they owe to a system that is sanctioning them? What more can we penalize them with if they don’t pay, nukes? They are literally removing themselves from the system the west has set up and are creating a new one with other BRIC nations to try to compete.
Russia won't but the West will. If you have a clear cut case of contract breach, then it's pretty straightforward to confiscate the property via courts and so on. The sanctions, on the other hand, are more complex, they might involve freezes (even if permanent, it's not confiscation), have different extent, not all countries subscribe to them, etc. The world is complex.
Russians have kind of the same possible motivation as everyone.
To take the option of some future DE/RU agreement regarding restoring the flow of gas off the table. To force everyone to fully commit to their current strategy.
> To force everyone to fully commit to their current strategy.
I agree the destruction of the pipeline does have this effect, but Russia seemingly wants NATO support for Ukraine to falter, not persist. Russia seems to want NATO to deviate from their current strategy.
Russia also wants the EU and especially Germany to deviate from their current "no dependency on Russian gas ever again" strategy, at least in the mid- to long term. Those pipelines could have sat there until needed.
It's called burning bridges. Both domestically and internationally. It signals that Russia is committed to seeing the war through regardless of what the West does and it consolidates power domestically by discouraging any potential conspirators from acting against Putin since destroying the pipelines makes it virtually impossible for any replacement to resume delivery of gas to Europe
As I wrote in the post above, they still retain the levarage through the Druzhba [1] and Yamal [2] pipelines (passing via Belarus and Ukraine). These combined have a MUCH greater capacity than Nord Stream 1.
> [1]: 1) to claim force majeure and avoid massive penalties Gazprom would have to pay for the breach of contract (now they just blame the West and good luck proving in courts who actually did it);
This doesn't make much sense to me. Even if we assume the premise that they have such a motivation and can't.. simply refuse to pay fines.. there are easier ways for them to destroy their ability to deliver gas without causing such expensive damage. For instance, they could claim more of their turbines failed. Then when the war is over and they want to sell more gas, the repairs would be a lot cheaper.
> Also, I think it is a statement to EU: your underwater infrastructure is not safe.
I don't buy this "blow up our pipeline to implicitly threaten others" narrative at all, for the simple reason that all the involved countries knew Russia had this capability already. If it was meant as a demonstration, it would be a demonstration of madness, not technical ability.
Can someone explain the chemistry of natural gas exploding by itself?
In my understanding, you need oxygen for that to happen. There's a bunch of oxygen in the H2O, but what exactly would the products of an explosive reaction between natural gas and water be? Hydrogen and CO2? Don't think there's much energy to be released there...
I can totally buy the "you depressurized only one end, so you had a plug slam into the next bend of the pipeline", and that might plausibly register as an explosion on seismic detectors. But hydrocarbons by themselves aren't explosive - they need something to react with.
If you have pressures above 3,000psi any sudden leak or hole will be pretty catastrophic. Not an explosion like a fire explosion, something more like explosive decompression in a plane.
Anyway I think they Swedes have pinned it down to an explosion, as in a bomb, based on seismometers.
If you google Nord Stream pressure the first link is to PDF that lists 220 bar as one of the pressures levels in the Nord Stream.[1] I can’t find the pressure level at the time of the explosion.
It's designed to not pop, but implicit in the theory is that maintenance is shoddy and enough water has got in somehow to let hydrates form. Confidence in absence of pop may be misplaced.
An article linked to by the author mentions a case of rapid disassociation of the hydrate on heating, but the heat was applied to the pipeline externally, and probably at a point such that the disassociation occurred within the body of the plug, as opposed to one of its ends.
I'm wondering if it's a combination of the two, and a physical effect rather than a chemical one. If you run the hydrate plug into a wall, the hydrate at the impact site will get crushed and release its gas, which has a bigger volume than the original plug. Local pressure goes up so the force of the impact is magnified. That means a smaller impact has potentially an outsized effect.
No idea if that works, because otherwise I think you're right. No oxygen, no kaboom. And if there was oxygen present, the leak would be on fire.
"...and subject to Russian maintenance. And I’m here to tell you — Russian maintenance under the current oligarchy system isn’t any better than it was under the Soviet system."
He is, as I read it, basically saying the methane may not be being properly isolated from the atmosphere so air may be leaking in.
That said, you'd need a mega-massive-big input of oxygen contamination (wiki: "... 5–15% concentration [of air, not neat oxygen, IIUC] in a flammable or explosive mixture", and it would have to happen before gas pressurisation (or the methan would leak out, not air in). So I dunno.
The best reasoning I've seen on the matter is this:
Countries in Europe have been pretty clear that no-one is going to back down on supporting Ukraine in order to get some cheap Russian gas. So the pipeline is useless to Putin.
However, a rival oligarch/military leader/whatever in Russia could try to cut a deal with Europe and say that they promise to kill Putin and get Russian troops out of Ukraine, in exchange for agreements to resume the gas trade and no questions asked about who the money for the gas is going to.
So the pipeline is useless to Russia as long as Putin is in charge, but it's also a threat to Putin, personally, since it can be used to fund a coup against him. Therefore, he decided to sabotage it. If you think of Putin as a paranoid mafia boss foremost, and a politician and world leader second, this explanation makes sense.
> Countries in Europe have been pretty clear that no-one is going to back down on supporting Ukraine in order to get some cheap Russian gas.
They've said it, but what prevents them from changing their mind when domestic political pressure during winter increases? Well, blowing up the pipeline helps prevent it..
It's called planning for contingencies. Even if there was only a remote possibility of Germany folding, that's a contingency worth planning for.
> Countries in Europe have been pretty clear that no-one is going to back down on supporting Ukraine in order to get some cheap Russian gas. So the pipeline is useless to Putin.
Actually it’s been the opposite if you watch leaders speak and read between the lines. Only days ago, Macron gave an interview hinting that the Ukrainians may need to reach a negotiated settlement with Russia, and played coy with reporters when they asked if Ukraine might need to give up territory to do so. I’m willing to bet he (And especially the Germans) know something that the public doesn’t when it comes to the reality of the energy situation.
These two pipelines have very different operational histories so the simultaneous formation of a 'methane hydrate plug' in both pipelines seems highly unlikely at best. There's also no apparent reason why such a methane hydrate plug should cause seismic-scale explosions in both pipelines.
As far as motivation, the US agenda on Europe's fossil fuel market since at least 2008 has been to lock out Russian suppliers (who don't bank their oil profits with Wall Street) in favor of American and Middle Eastern importers (those who do bank their funds appropriately, i.e. Qatar/Saudi/Kuwait/UAE good, Iran bad). This has gained extra impetus since the fracking boom and the rise in production in the USA, leading to pushes to open up export markets.
Now, would Russia want to blow up its own pipelines when it can simply shut them down for 'maintenance' until sanctions are lifted if it wanted to cut off the flow of gas? That's a ludicrous stretch of the imagination. This leaves the USA as the one with the obvious motive to do this.
I personally think Europe would have been better off pushing rapid renewable development for the past few decades, which it has to some extent, but a more concentrated effort over the past few decades would have put them in a position where their economies were not dependent on either the USA or Russia.
[edit: relevant quote - "There are many ways to light Europe" - from the movie, Syriana]
Both the US and Russia could have factions that benefit from Germany being unable to turn the gas back on. Factions in Germany, too.
Whomever did it (and US and Russia are NOT the only actors capable) the clear result is these pipelines are no longer operational and there is very little political will anywhere to rebuild them.
This explanation doesn't clarify why Putin wouldn't blow up the pipelines in July, before telling Europe that they won't deliver gas as long as Europe applies sanctions on Russia. By doing that, Putin already broke any contracts.
IMHO there are two big motivations it seems -- one is that some sub-group that is not doing well right now, might advance their position with the act of war; or some sub-group stands to make a lot of money quickly, with this act of war.
It is hard to believe that top-level commanders on any side, would act directly .. in other words, no one that is doing well right now, would pull this trigger.. when you look at the person making the statements, look behind them to the left and the right, to see the actual suspects.
You're underestimating the sensitivity of seismic sensors. Bear in mind that they picked up not only the initial rupture, but also the noise of the escaping gas after the fact.
I've been firmly in camp incompetence-before-malice since they went pop; the 17 hour gap just doesn't feel right for an intentional attack. Shoddy maintenance causing catastrophic failure by some mechanism even if it's not hydrate plugs makes at least as much sense to me as geopolitical tomfoolery.
> the 17 hour gap just doesn't feel right for an intentional attack
Why? 17 hours is enough time to figure out what happened, but not enough time to prevent it from happening again. If the attacks were calculated to have a psychological impact on political leadership, 17 hours or so sounds about right to me.
And keep in mind, the bombs might have been planted months ago. 17 hours isn't enough time to inspect the whole pipe for more bombs.
Regarding your comment of unlikely simultaneous formation of plugs, the thinking would be that Russian interests were attempting to test or clean or prep both lines.
This really is a plausible scenario. Hydrate buildup is a very real risk in a pipeline that isn't flowing. Trying to deal with it in a less than ideal way can absolutely lead to loss of containment and would explain the multiple leaks.
Of course, hostile action is also a plausible explanation, but it is very fair to point out that we really don't have any clear evidence either way and both are reasonably likely.
As pointed out in the original article, if they were trying to clear hydrate blockages without coordination with folks at the "other end" of the pipeline, it could make sense that they'd try to operate on both in the same timeframe.
The coordination of timing is still one of the biggest arguments in favor of this being sabotage, though.
Each of the two nord stream links consist of two pipelines. All four exploded on the same evening, in exactly one place on each. Three of the leaks are very close to each other, the fourth is within 50 kilometers from the others, along a 1000+ km long pipeline. By accident?
All relevant authorities on different sides of the conflict agree that this was sabotage.
It can be fun to stretch the imagination and construct complicated technical causes. But it should be known that this was not an accident.
"All relevant authorities on different sides of the conflict agree that this was sabotage"
So your entire argument is appeal to questionable authorities? What are their expertise with pipeline maintenance disasters?
How and why would an underwater demo team plant explosives 50 km apart? Why would they trigger explosions 17 hours apart?
If a hydrate plug is triggered to cause an explosion in one pipeline due to a specific temperature/pressure combination, how long would it take for a similar explosion to occur in another pipeline at the exact same temperature/pressure combination?
Shaped charges are easy to make [0], and technical divers can go to 70 meters.
I don't think it's out of line to think that German eco-terrorists could have done it. So the whodunnit list is quite long.
A non-state actor is possible, but unlikely. It would require an organization, a small group at least, that had the inclination, opportunity, skill and resources. Any one or two of those is easy, but to actually do it requires all of those simultaneously.
Furthermore such a serious attack from eco-terrorists would be fairly unprecedented. It's a far cry from torching a resort or tree spiking.
Probably, but there conceivably might be some 'ends justify the means' logic that could motivate it. There have been some eco-terrorist attacks against nuclear power plants for instance, which on the face of it seems contradictory but I presume is justified using some sort of "raise awareness" logic. But without any eco-terrorist group taking credit for this, such a motivation seems particularly unlikely.
Eco terrorism is a made up concept. It doesn't exist outside of James Bond. Besides, this leak has horrible environmental consequences. If it was a deliberate attack, extremely successful, wouldn't some group have taken responsibility by now?
So what? How many actual eco terror acts have happened? Sure, civil disobedience, some sabotage / obstruction towards fossile industry / nuclear. But nothing, not remotely, on the scale of those pipelines.
In movies however, eco terrorism is relatively common.
Perhaps you'd be more comfortable with the term radical environmentalists? Western leaders are ratcheting up the climate change/ESG rhetoric like never before. A whole generation of kids now think the world will literally end in their lifetimes. What do you expect will happen?
Pretty obvious sabotage. Neither a whale, nor a trawl can do it. Who benefits is a different question.
Russia is economically damaged but once deciding that selling gas to Europe is not more an option, Putin has now a plausible excuse to not fulfill the gas contracts anymore, without being economically penalized for breaking those contracts, because... not my fault.
It is desperate also to spark the flames of war in their population. So can use also the issue as leverage to force apathetic Russian people that for some strange reason don't like to die to accept the new situation.
If Russian people keep refusing to fight in the war, the war is over. And if Russia lose this war, Putin is politically dead and will be removed from the power by any means necessary. And removed means, probably killed by its own people. He needs to put their citizens in a much worse situation, so can justify a full call to arms.
European Union does not have nothing to gain with this.
USA could benefit as gas seller and to force Putin to not use nuclear arms in Ukraine near the remaining pipes. Putin went to Belarus only few days ago.
Other could benefit for undisclosed reasons. (Edited the China could benefit part, it was clearly a stupid idea)
Putin doesn't care about contracts. He does care about having operational pipelines so he can use them as leverage with the west when Europe runs low on energy.
The US finally cobbled together a coalition to block Russian aggression, and the coalition is enabling Ukraine to win this war. Why would they want to destroy this coalition getting caught sabotaging pipelines in Europe?
Nord stream 1 was finished in 2011 but Nord stream 2 finished in 2021. Even with lousy maintenance, one year old pipelines shouldn't break by corrosion, concrete cracks or fatigue of materials.
Four old and new pipelines breaking in exactly he same day or week is very suspicious. Shouldn't happen, unless there is a common cause and they are correlated somehow. I assume (could be wrong) that Nordstream 1 and 2 don't run exactly by the same location in the sea bottom so one minor explosion in the old one shouldn't affect the other one.
If is not fatigue of materials, only could be (I'm speculating) the pressure raising in the pipes for some reason until blowing it. I don't know if this can happen with the pumps stopped or a half speed, but looks like a plausible cause.
In any case a drone with a small explosive charge was found yet in nov-205 near the Nord Stream pipelines not far from the location that was damaged in 2022.
I miss the people who were good at realpolitik. What happened barely matters. The situation appears to be escalating, there is a mobilised Russian army to worry about now.
People are underestimating how unpredictable and damaging war is. Throwing weapons and sanctions at Russia is not a plausible path to peace and prosperity. This should have been Iraq 2.0.
If the situation goes biblical, I'd rather be reading about turning the other cheek than the apocalypse.
Anyway, that seems like an awful idea to me. Russia is still nuclear armed and if you try to attack Russia hard and fast, as America did to Iraq twice, there is a chance they would respond with nuclear force. Better to keep the war at a relatively low intensity and bleed Russia dead slowly, so that at no point does Russian leadership experience existential panic. Boil the frog^W bear slow so he doesn't jump out of the pot.
You want to purposefully destabilise the government of a country with the largest nuclear arsenal? Are you crazy!? That is the worst strategy I've ever heard, and it is also insane. That is literally a plan to see a new Hitler, but with with nukes.
Iraq 2.0 as in Russia plays the role of the US and Ukraine plays the role of Iraq.
I'd imagine both the Swedish and Danish marines have already investigated the ruptures and it must be trivial to figure out whether the explosions were accidents or sabotage. A detonation using explosives placed on the pipe must cause different kinds of damage than if the tube ruptured from within.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 222 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
It's a razor fight then!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
If they wanted it done bad enough, they could have found a way.
Well, the US literally did have a practice round, but I don't think their benefit outweighs the potential backlash either. Russia really doesn't risk backlash, but on the first order seems more harmed than not. Maybe it would force Europe to reckon with a winter without Russian gas before the winter comes? Seems pretty flimsy.
Sure there is. The Polish Navy could practice finding the pipeline as much as they want. They could also practice blowing things up underwater as much as they want. Doing both at once isn't much more of a problem.
Also I think the backlash issue is overstated, particularly for America. What would Germany do, rage-quit NATO? Not a chance. Get pissy about it but do nothing? Very likely. Bury the evidence so they don't have to explain it to their public? Also very likely. In this regard, America has much more leeway than Poland.
I don't think rage-quitting NATO would be the concern, but a trade war. The US bombing the pipeline is like a tariff applied outside their borders, you can't firmly discount the possibility that someone would take issue with it. Is it likely? Honestly I doubt it, but for the US to benefit western Europe would definitely need to crack come winter (which is by no means guaranteed), and it would be have to be easier to import from America than from Russia even if they did, which isn't obvious. If the US had the capacity to sell enough gas to Europe to profit from this, they wouldn't be worried about energy-hungry nations breaking the embargo!
The UK is not my first or even second suspicion, but it could have been them.
There’s no point in overthrowing him to turn the pipeline back on if the pipeline doesn’t exist.
Gazprom executives may wish to resume their lives of absurd luxury yachting around the Mediterranean. They probably don't enjoy being sanctioned and deprived of the luxury they think they're entitled to.
But at the same time, this requires some real resources to execute something like this. I can imagine mid-sized corporations having access to the resources to do it, but not without leaving a significant paper trail.
I don't imagine terrorist organizations have that kind of funding.
The US is a good candidate, but I don't see how it hurts Russia more than it hurts the rest of Europe. It'd be unusually Machiavellian for even us, if it was the US.
I don't know who that leaves...
It doesn't matter if it hurts Europe, if it benefits the USA. The capital never cares about the colonies, and weakening own colonies and enemies, while at she same times strengthening themselves, is a valid strategy. Machiavellian or not, doesn't matter.
Long term, Europe is bound to be dependable on LNG gas imports from the USA. Many companies are shutting down in Europe and considering moving to the place with much cheaper energy.
How do you calculate the hurt? Absolute hurt, or relative hurt? If I take $20 from you and $10 from a homeless man, I've taken more from you in absolute terms but more from the homeless man in relative terms.
Not assuming malice is a good policy in ordinary everyday situations, but the razor lacks that nuance and says to Never assume malice, which is going too far.
Hanlons Razor, as you are using it, says that is usually not the case.
There is a reason for the heuristic to hold for a time after a big change in human society. This usually corresponds to a time when the peoppe in power don't understand what was going on. They had strategies that were successful in the previous age and those strategies are obsolete now. The first usage seems to be approximately in the time of Napoleon, when gunpowder fundamentally changed feudalism. For another example, compared to its younger brother, World War 1 could have had Yakety Sax as its soundtrack.
There is also a really compelling machanism by which Hanlon's razor fails to apply. Eventually it is the case that competent, selfish strategies prevail and proliferate. They don't go away once they exist, they just accumulate. Eventually, behavior you encounter can be most easily explained by deducing the optimal strategy for the agents involved. This is roughly how biologists operate, and they only study things with comparatively low intelligence.
It should be noted that Hanlon's razor is, as a rule, completely incompatible with the equally popular Chesterton's fence heuristic. If incompetence is likely the correct explanation for the fence, then its fine to get rid of.
Edit, a source, well, says 4 leaks: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-29/sweden-sa...
Highly speculative opinion not grounded in fact and blatantly pushing a conclusion . . . what else can you say? Why is this even submitted to HN? A conversation starter?
The phrase "Trust me, bro" is not meant to indicate the press or any entity is above fact and evidence based reporting.
If this was a story in the New York Times, it would be in the opinion section. There is an expectation in intellectual reporting to have a factual basis to draw a conclusion upon.
I'm annoyed that the blog linked here simply starts off with such a broad, presumptive take citing nothing but the opinions of some stranger on the internet and starts to make such strong conclusions.
I would say the same thing if this was reported in the "Establishment press" or anywhere else. As should anyone reading this.
Being critical of non factual reporting should be encouraged regardless of where the story is published.
Whoever did this, they solved a Godrian knot. Imagine going into winter with one pipeline being the lifeline of europe.
[My conspiracy theory: this was a arranged via secret negotiations between US and Russia. They want an end to the war with russia cut off from the western system and europe out of the picture. Putin gets pyrrhic "victory" and a golden bridge with the new republics, and Ukraine joins NATO, with nukes pointed at russia]
Who did it does matter. If Russia didn't self-sabotage they may feel some obligation to retaliate proportionally against someone else's energy infrastructure.
Why do they have to retaliate against the energy infrastructure? I read some article saying it would be much easier for them to cut off some major internet cables between North America and Europe.
Seems plausible to me. It's probably much easier to do without trace and leave the enemy without a hard proof that they did it.
The Yamal pipeline (to Poland via Belarus) has been shut down since May. The other pipelines through Belarus and Ukraine (Northern Lights, Soyuz, Brotherhood) all appear to still be operational.
If it was the US it's not Russia's role to be pissed, attacking allies infrastructure isn't a big brain move
Gas line works fine for years, suddenly during regional conflict it goes tits up?
A dying country whose leadership seems intent on putting it out of its misery sending its potential fathers to a meat grinder, a history of stupid big picture choices, angry at the world for not letting it conquer it might partake in environmental sabotage.
It’s a lot less on the nose than nukes; if we can’t have imperialist nation state, no one can!
The holocaust is proof of human indifference to each other’s existence. What do a bunch of old turds care about intentional environmental destruction?
Putin is not going to blow up his biggest leverage over Europe during a cold winter, its his only chance at getting them to reduce support for Ukraine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_hlMK7tCks
See also the hint from the past aka ""russian" submarine's at sweden's coast":
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B788MB9J/ref=dbs_a_def_r...
US/UK had big interests in a dead Olaf Palme (not saying the US/UK did it, that would be ridiculous...the US/UK killing a European PM..pfff) and a Sweden who is against the USSR instead of making bridges between europe and the soviets.
If you don't think what he wrote is true, rebut him factually, random HN guy.
The weight ist 13 tonnes steel + 13 tonnes concrete per segment, IIRC, diameter is 1.1m and segment length is 13m. Steel is ~7kg/dm³ => You can now calculate the wall thickness.
OK, OK, let's not talk: 130 dm * ((11/2dm + X)² - (11/2 dm)²) * \pi * 7kg/dm³ = 13000kg => X = 0.39dm
EDIT: Corrected the sign...
This is only true if the operation was conducted in hostile waters. Just saying.
That makes me think a military probably did do it.
You could lay explosives months in advance and remotely trigger them or have them on a timer.
While I think accidental failure of the Nordstream pipeline is an underrated explanation, such a glaring factual inaccuracy makes me skeptical of the viability of the specific theory espoused in this article.
Watching these movies is definitely fun, but living 1000km from a war zone is somewhat worrisome.
Anyways, I'll move finishing my bug-out-bag higher on my todo list.
Putin needs the revenues from these pipelines once hostilities end. He was likely extremely hopeful Europe would cave this winter and he could use them as leverage.
Biden has finally gotten a coalition in Europe to take Russia's aggressions seriously and their combined efforts have Ukraine making great progress in winning the war.
As for explosions, they were recorded by the seismologist in Sweden and Denmark who are quite convinced it was due to a deliberate action: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-gas-baltic-pipelines-leaks/32...
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2022/09/29/russian-s...
The pipelines now being destroyed is a really bad thing for Russia, a worse thing for the EU and a great situation for the USA (and Poland, who just opened a pipeline). Both Biden and Nuland have both publicly threatened to take out the pipelines. Ukraine has also lobbied hard against them.
I mean, it very well could be the Russians. They certainly have the capability - but I'm struggling to see the logic behind cutting off their dealmaking hand.
Moreover, Russia can still supply very significant quantities of gas via Belarus and Ukraine, so they retain the leverage to blackmail the EU.
Somebody didn't want Germany making a deal with Russia after the reality of winter sets in.
Also, you assume the pipelines are irreparable, but we don't know that.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-business-europe-ge... [2] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/how-dependent-is-ger...
The world isn't that complex. Putin needs these pipelines, they offer leverage when Europe runs low on gas.
To take the option of some future DE/RU agreement regarding restoring the flow of gas off the table. To force everyone to fully commit to their current strategy.
I agree the destruction of the pipeline does have this effect, but Russia seemingly wants NATO support for Ukraine to falter, not persist. Russia seems to want NATO to deviate from their current strategy.
Putin might want to make sure no one pressures him to reopen the pipeline.
German leaders might want to make sure no one pressures them to reopen the pipeline.
Etc.
I'm not claiming that this was the actual motivation for the attack, of course.
Putin wants Europe to cave this winter and use the leverage of turning these pipelines back on to get them to stop suppporting Ukraine.
How? This has literally removed their ability to blackmail Europe, as it's not even an option anymore.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druzhba_pipeline [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamal%E2%80%93Europe_pipeline
This doesn't make much sense to me. Even if we assume the premise that they have such a motivation and can't.. simply refuse to pay fines.. there are easier ways for them to destroy their ability to deliver gas without causing such expensive damage. For instance, they could claim more of their turbines failed. Then when the war is over and they want to sell more gas, the repairs would be a lot cheaper.
Also, I think it is a statement to EU: your underwater infrastructure is not safe.
I don't buy this "blow up our pipeline to implicitly threaten others" narrative at all, for the simple reason that all the involved countries knew Russia had this capability already. If it was meant as a demonstration, it would be a demonstration of madness, not technical ability.
In my understanding, you need oxygen for that to happen. There's a bunch of oxygen in the H2O, but what exactly would the products of an explosive reaction between natural gas and water be? Hydrogen and CO2? Don't think there's much energy to be released there...
I can totally buy the "you depressurized only one end, so you had a plug slam into the next bend of the pipeline", and that might plausibly register as an explosion on seismic detectors. But hydrocarbons by themselves aren't explosive - they need something to react with.
Anyway I think they Swedes have pinned it down to an explosion, as in a bomb, based on seismometers.
But it's also designed to not pop (and do we have any examples of a catastrophic pipe failure vs a leak?).
I could be wrong.
[1] https://www.nord-stream.com/download/document/10/?language=e...
Very high and then suddenly very low, I'd assume.
https://9to5science.com/reaction-of-water-and-methane
An article linked to by the author mentions a case of rapid disassociation of the hydrate on heating, but the heat was applied to the pipeline externally, and probably at a point such that the disassociation occurred within the body of the plug, as opposed to one of its ends.
https://petrowiki.spe.org/Hydrate_plug_removal
No idea if that works, because otherwise I think you're right. No oxygen, no kaboom. And if there was oxygen present, the leak would be on fire.
He is, as I read it, basically saying the methane may not be being properly isolated from the atmosphere so air may be leaking in.
That said, you'd need a mega-massive-big input of oxygen contamination (wiki: "... 5–15% concentration [of air, not neat oxygen, IIUC] in a flammable or explosive mixture", and it would have to happen before gas pressurisation (or the methan would leak out, not air in). So I dunno.
An accident would explain the glaring absence of an actor with both motive and opportunity.
It's also hard to believe it was Russia, since now they can't blackmail Europe.
Both Biden and Victoria Nuland have both publicly threaded to take out the pipelines on video no less.
Countries in Europe have been pretty clear that no-one is going to back down on supporting Ukraine in order to get some cheap Russian gas. So the pipeline is useless to Putin.
However, a rival oligarch/military leader/whatever in Russia could try to cut a deal with Europe and say that they promise to kill Putin and get Russian troops out of Ukraine, in exchange for agreements to resume the gas trade and no questions asked about who the money for the gas is going to.
So the pipeline is useless to Russia as long as Putin is in charge, but it's also a threat to Putin, personally, since it can be used to fund a coup against him. Therefore, he decided to sabotage it. If you think of Putin as a paranoid mafia boss foremost, and a politician and world leader second, this explanation makes sense.
They've said it, but what prevents them from changing their mind when domestic political pressure during winter increases? Well, blowing up the pipeline helps prevent it..
It's called planning for contingencies. Even if there was only a remote possibility of Germany folding, that's a contingency worth planning for.
Actually it’s been the opposite if you watch leaders speak and read between the lines. Only days ago, Macron gave an interview hinting that the Ukrainians may need to reach a negotiated settlement with Russia, and played coy with reporters when they asked if Ukraine might need to give up territory to do so. I’m willing to bet he (And especially the Germans) know something that the public doesn’t when it comes to the reality of the energy situation.
Sabotage would destroy the European coalition against Russian aggression they've worked so hard to build.
Really ludicrous conspiracy theory that makes an accident the most likely cause.
As far as motivation, the US agenda on Europe's fossil fuel market since at least 2008 has been to lock out Russian suppliers (who don't bank their oil profits with Wall Street) in favor of American and Middle Eastern importers (those who do bank their funds appropriately, i.e. Qatar/Saudi/Kuwait/UAE good, Iran bad). This has gained extra impetus since the fracking boom and the rise in production in the USA, leading to pushes to open up export markets.
Now, would Russia want to blow up its own pipelines when it can simply shut them down for 'maintenance' until sanctions are lifted if it wanted to cut off the flow of gas? That's a ludicrous stretch of the imagination. This leaves the USA as the one with the obvious motive to do this.
I personally think Europe would have been better off pushing rapid renewable development for the past few decades, which it has to some extent, but a more concentrated effort over the past few decades would have put them in a position where their economies were not dependent on either the USA or Russia.
[edit: relevant quote - "There are many ways to light Europe" - from the movie, Syriana]
Whomever did it (and US and Russia are NOT the only actors capable) the clear result is these pipelines are no longer operational and there is very little political will anywhere to rebuild them.
Biden getting caught sabotaging this pipeline would destroy the critical European coalitions he spent so much time building.
Because they can break the contracts due to "force-majeure" clauses, which shutting down won't let them do
It is hard to believe that top-level commanders on any side, would act directly .. in other words, no one that is doing well right now, would pull this trigger.. when you look at the person making the statements, look behind them to the left and the right, to see the actual suspects.
I've been firmly in camp incompetence-before-malice since they went pop; the 17 hour gap just doesn't feel right for an intentional attack. Shoddy maintenance causing catastrophic failure by some mechanism even if it's not hydrate plugs makes at least as much sense to me as geopolitical tomfoolery.
Why? 17 hours is enough time to figure out what happened, but not enough time to prevent it from happening again. If the attacks were calculated to have a psychological impact on political leadership, 17 hours or so sounds about right to me.
And keep in mind, the bombs might have been planted months ago. 17 hours isn't enough time to inspect the whole pipe for more bombs.
Of course, hostile action is also a plausible explanation, but it is very fair to point out that we really don't have any clear evidence either way and both are reasonably likely.
The coordination of timing is still one of the biggest arguments in favor of this being sabotage, though.
All relevant authorities on different sides of the conflict agree that this was sabotage.
It can be fun to stretch the imagination and construct complicated technical causes. But it should be known that this was not an accident.
So your entire argument is appeal to questionable authorities? What are their expertise with pipeline maintenance disasters?
How and why would an underwater demo team plant explosives 50 km apart? Why would they trigger explosions 17 hours apart?
If a hydrate plug is triggered to cause an explosion in one pipeline due to a specific temperature/pressure combination, how long would it take for a similar explosion to occur in another pipeline at the exact same temperature/pressure combination?
[0] https://youtu.be/UHoqYi8XOA4?t=427
Furthermore such a serious attack from eco-terrorists would be fairly unprecedented. It's a far cry from torching a resort or tree spiking.
In movies however, eco terrorism is relatively common.
Russia is economically damaged but once deciding that selling gas to Europe is not more an option, Putin has now a plausible excuse to not fulfill the gas contracts anymore, without being economically penalized for breaking those contracts, because... not my fault.
It is desperate also to spark the flames of war in their population. So can use also the issue as leverage to force apathetic Russian people that for some strange reason don't like to die to accept the new situation.
If Russian people keep refusing to fight in the war, the war is over. And if Russia lose this war, Putin is politically dead and will be removed from the power by any means necessary. And removed means, probably killed by its own people. He needs to put their citizens in a much worse situation, so can justify a full call to arms.
European Union does not have nothing to gain with this.
USA could benefit as gas seller and to force Putin to not use nuclear arms in Ukraine near the remaining pipes. Putin went to Belarus only few days ago.
Other could benefit for undisclosed reasons. (Edited the China could benefit part, it was clearly a stupid idea)
The US finally cobbled together a coalition to block Russian aggression, and the coalition is enabling Ukraine to win this war. Why would they want to destroy this coalition getting caught sabotaging pipelines in Europe?
Occcams razor says typical terrible Russian maintenance.
Four old and new pipelines breaking in exactly he same day or week is very suspicious. Shouldn't happen, unless there is a common cause and they are correlated somehow. I assume (could be wrong) that Nordstream 1 and 2 don't run exactly by the same location in the sea bottom so one minor explosion in the old one shouldn't affect the other one.
If is not fatigue of materials, only could be (I'm speculating) the pressure raising in the pipes for some reason until blowing it. I don't know if this can happen with the pumps stopped or a half speed, but looks like a plausible cause.
In any case a drone with a small explosive charge was found yet in nov-205 near the Nord Stream pipelines not far from the location that was damaged in 2022.
People are underestimating how unpredictable and damaging war is. Throwing weapons and sanctions at Russia is not a plausible path to peace and prosperity. This should have been Iraq 2.0.
If the situation goes biblical, I'd rather be reading about turning the other cheek than the apocalypse.
You mean 3.0 I assume...
Anyway, that seems like an awful idea to me. Russia is still nuclear armed and if you try to attack Russia hard and fast, as America did to Iraq twice, there is a chance they would respond with nuclear force. Better to keep the war at a relatively low intensity and bleed Russia dead slowly, so that at no point does Russian leadership experience existential panic. Boil the frog^W bear slow so he doesn't jump out of the pot.
Iraq 2.0 as in Russia plays the role of the US and Ukraine plays the role of Iraq.