13 ms·

Explosion at US natural gas plant raises risk of shortages in Europe

69 points by frozencell 4y ago

H8crilA 4y ago
Not implying anything at all, but I am worried about potential spetsnaz sabotage operations on the territory of Europe or maybe even the US. Particularly against ammunition factories, storage, or important energy related infrastructure. Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_mystery_fires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_mystery_fires I am sure that people responsible for security of such objects are perfectly aware of the risks, but then the same must be true on the Russian side. Example from the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Vrb%C4%9Btice_ammunition_warehouses_explosions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Vrb%C4%9Btice_ammunition_...
- blibble 4y ago
  yeah, I suspect anything that disrputs the flow of LNG to Europe is a pretty high priority for russian agents in the US
  - gonzo41 4y ago
    IF Russian spies are blowing up mainland US infrastructure, you can expect a massive escalation in Ukraine.
    - tomohawk 4y ago
      - hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
        You probably mistook Biden for Scholz.
        jkIHGs 4y ago
        Germany and other European countries are the contained nuclear war location in case of an escalation. It is easy to support all sorts of things from another continent. De Gaulle also did not trust the U.S. precisely for this reason and chose to build nuclear weapons and avoid being under the NATO command structure.
        hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
        I'm not saying withholding certain types of heavy weapons is good or bad, I was just responding to the person saying that Biden doesn't want these weapons to be delivered, which seemed a bit misguided.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- akira2501 4y ago
  Well.. it'd be a great time to skimp on maintenance and pocket that difference. Then when the inevitable happens, you can just shout "Russians!" More directly, I find this conspiratorial view hard to believe given the state of monopolization and infrastructure in the US. There is a much more logical explanation that should be eliminated first before this idea is even remotely entertained. As someone below mentioned.. if "escalation in Ukraine" is a potential outcome, then you should be very certain of what you claim or allow to be claimed.
  - gruez 4y ago
    > Well.. it'd be a great time to skimp on maintenance and pocket that difference. Then when the inevitable happens, you can just shout "Russians!" except, that's not how natural gas plants work. Shouting "Russians!" doesn't pay the repair bills, nor does it make up for the lost revenue in the meantime.
    - akira2501 4y ago
      If you consider the impact on _one_ plant. If the loss of that plant drives prices up for all other plants, than it could easily be worth it.
      - pdabbadabba 4y ago
        But then why stage an incident? If your total profits rise when production at one plant stops, why not just shut down the plant—or reduce output across all plants? As far as I know, nobody is forcing them to over produce.
        akira2501 4y ago
        A staged accident by foreign forces is the OP's wild assertion, I've made no such point. I'm suggesting that a more banal circumstance, lack of maintenance, and then a true accident, is much more likely. My point is that the current political environment makes deflecting blame in this situation a possibility, not that you would stage an accident to intentionally take advantage of it. How this is a harder idea to accept then "the russians are secretly blowing this up" is amazing to me, particularly on this forum.
- jimbob45 4y ago
  I’ll get a bit conspiratorial for a bit - the Russians just know that no sabotage may be allowed to be linked back to them. Otherwise, public support against them would immediately swell and every bad event would be speculated to have been caused by Russia. As such, it’s possible that this was Russia quietly trying to erode US/EU support for the war.
  - hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
    But does any public support for Russia still exist at this point? Do they have anything to lose? What we witness now is a sad farce where half of what they say are lies - there is no war, they are liberating their own citizens, everybody is welcoming them with flowers, etc. The peak of absurdity is when they "caught" some Ukrainian terrorists in Russia with copies of The Sims game instead of SIM cards.[0] At this point, who cares what they say? And, the other way round, why should they say what the public in the West is saying? [0] https://nypost.com/2022/04/25/russia-appears-to-confuse-the-sims-for-sim-cards-in-possible-staged-assassination-attempt/ https://nypost.com/2022/04/25/russia-appears-to-confuse-the-...
    - dynamic_sausage 4y ago
      The note claimed to be found at these "terrorists'" place in the bottom photo of the link you posted goes: dedicated to blah-blah, kill to live and live to kill, signature not legible. That is, the actual words "signature not legible" instead of what an FSB higher-up probably wanted to be an inscrutable scrawl masquerading as the signature. Some of these FSB guys come straight from a Monty Python sketch.
      - pandaman 4y ago
        It's allegedly a nom de plume of some neo-nazi in Russia: https://sensaciy.net/divanniye-eksperti-razoblachili-silovikov-podpis-nerazborchiva/ https://sensaciy.net/divanniye-eksperti-razoblachili-silovik...
    - ratsforhorses 4y ago
      On youtube there's an American guy called Hinkle dishing out pro Russian viewpoint, I mean even Trump was a Putin apologist and under the veneer he's probably still got a grudge against Zelensky for his 2nd impeachment so I expect a lot of his believers hold similar twisted views... I mean even if on the surface people agree Putler is evil, many probably view the inflation of oil prices and their diminishing buying power (and their economy...whatever that means) as being caused by the said WAR rather than too much money being printed in 2020-21 to prop up all those poor airlines etc etc
- everybodyknows 4y ago
  Putin will remember another explosion well, happening in his early Soviet days. Search for: Siberia pipeline explosion Thomas C. Reed 1982
- tomjen3 4y ago
  I am not. Because if Russia does that, the west will have to declare war and then this shit is over. And if you are going to reply anything about nukes, don't. Neither the us or Russia will fire them.
  - Fatnino 4y ago
    How do you see a match up like that ending? USA pushes Russia back to pre Crimea seizure borders? Why stop there? Why not go to the Volga? Ukraine reached almost all the way to the river before WWII. Maybe go all the way to the Caspian? Provide some security for Georgia and incidentally get A LOT of oil. At what point do you suppose Russia abandons its "no nukes" policy in this hypothetical conflict?
    - baybal2 4y ago
- hulitu 4y ago
  I am worried that guardian was a newspaper.
- moistly 4y ago
  It is said that the CIA sabotaged Russian pipelines back in Reagan’s day, using methods quite similar to their sabotage of Iran’s centrifuges: diddling the controller software. As I’m sure we all know, we have made the tragic mistake of connecting a lot of our own infrastructure to the internet: water treatment plants, electrical grid, pipelines, and more. All of which are, naturally, now susceptible to over-the-net attack. The spetsnaz needn’t do anything: Russian hackers can fuck it all up from the safety of their keyboards. https://www.wired.com/2004/03/soviets-burned-by-cia-hackers/ https://www.wired.com/2004/03/soviets-burned-by-cia-hackers/ https://www.npr.org/2011/05/09/135854490/inside-the-united-states-secret-sabotage-of-iran https://www.npr.org/2011/05/09/135854490/inside-the-united-s...
  - throwoutway 4y ago
    > The spetsnaz needn’t do anything: Russian hackers can fuck it all up from the safety of their keyboards. For those who don’t believe it, look up the story of sandworm
- supertrope 4y ago
  Why sabotage in person when there are better options with plausible deniability? The Colonial Pipeline supply shock was started by criminal hackers in Russia using ransomware as a service. The company halted service to deal with the computer issue. Then traditional media and social media amplified panic buying. Russia says they arrested the extortionists. This is the country that brags about "patriotic hackers."
kurthr 4y ago
This is rare enough that I hope quite a bit of effort is put into figuring out exactly how it happened. There are many possibilities, but some of them are more/less avoidable and important for very different reasons.
- 01100011 4y ago
  The most likely explanation is an industrial facility running close to 100% utilization, likely with reduced or poorly trained staff due to COVID and a tight labor market.
mateo1 4y ago
I am in awe that so far eu politicians are still reluctant to move back to whatever fossil fuels exist in the continent, and instead still push hard for the unachievable fantasy of an emissions-free europe. When is the renewables revolution coming? Well the energy transition better be over by October or we're in for an unfathomable crisis here in the old world.
- bushbaba 4y ago
  To be fair, if we leaned in on nuclear we'd be oil free. I'd much rather deal with highly concentrated nuclear waste than CO2 & Methane emissions
  - mistrial9 4y ago
    > To be fair, if we leaned in on nuclear we'd be oil free no one knows that -- you think that Exxon and crew are ready to sit down ? They fired their Dutch CEO for trying to make the transition almost twenty years ago IIR As others in this thread say -- this change reveals the struggles between giants, not the quarrels of simple people in media that happens daily
  - chki 4y ago
    Maybe if we had leaned in on nuclear 40-50 years ago. (Even then, Uranium does not grow on trees). But right now, that's not a viable option for the next thirty years. Industrial and Regulatory challenges are impossible to overcome in the timeframe that's needed.
    - bushbaba 4y ago
      The USGS has identified US thorium reserves that could meet the WORLD's energy for the next 138 years. I hope in 200 years when or if we run out of nuclear energy that we've managed to find alternative energy sources or leverage space mining. https://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1336/pdf/C1336.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1336/pdf/C1336.pdf
      - 4y ago
tomohawk 4y ago
This is the folly of turning off nukes and relying on intermittent power. It greatly increases the need for gas powered generators.
- morsch 4y ago
  Except in summer, when it's hot and dry enough again for France's nuclear power plants to turn intermittent, too.
fritigern 4y ago
It is a mistake for us to replace Russian gas with American gas.
- jkIHGs 4y ago
  I agree. Even if Russia is our worst enemy, depleting their resources first is quite a logical step. Would you want Russia to be the last country that still has oil reserves for its military? Replacing Russia with Qatar or Saudi Arabia (Jemen war?) is hypocritical. Replacing Russia with the U.S. gives the U.S. too much power over the EU. It can be used as a bargaining chip in unrelated negotiations like privacy rights etc.
  - hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
    > Even if Russia is our worst enemy, depleting their resources first is quite a logical step. Would you want Russia to be the last country that still has oil reserves for its military? The fallacy in this reasoning is that with the money from the sales of gas Russia can - and is continuing to - arm themselves and conquer more land and kill more people. The Qatar is not engaged in killing thousands of people right now - if they were, we would not be buying oil from them, either, for the same reasons we are reducing our dependence on Russian gas.
    - jkIHGs 4y ago
      You did not address the reasoning, which is about the fact that the last country on earth with oil reserves will have a strategic advantage. Russia can always trade with China to have enough money for weapons. Anyway, even with all the Europe trade in the past decades they can barely advance 50 km in Ukraine.
      - hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
        > You did not address the reasoning, which is about the fact that the last country on earth with oil reserves will have a strategic advantage. I agree this is a problem, and hopefully its scale will be much lower in a few decades as we are moving away from fossil fuels. But even if we were consuming them rapidly as we are doing now, we are talking ca. 50 years for oil and natural gas. Whereas the danger from Russia is right now.
morninglight 4y ago
Was the LNG control system air-gapped, isolated and triple redundant? Or was it some fly-by-night "hot-backup" contraption tied to the internet? .
- Kim_Bruning 4y ago
  There definitely seems to be a dearth of competent IT people in industry in Europe in general. I wonder if the same is true in the USA.
lizardactivist 4y ago
- coffeeblack 4y ago
  Funding the invasion of a European country and the murder of countless Europeans doesn’t seem like a good option. What’s bad about gas from the US?
  - toss1 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - lizardactivist 4y ago
    Have you forgot how the U.S. has used its armed forces in the last 100 years? Buying U.S. gas possibly means funding the invasion of whatever country is next on the agenda, and the murder of countless civilians. How is that a good option?
    - mensetmanusman 4y ago
      If you go back 100 years that includes World War II…
      - lizardactivist 4y ago
        You're grasping.
    - coffeeblack 4y ago
      Should Germany stop exporting cars because of WWI + II then?
      - lizardactivist 4y ago
        The U.S. has a long history from past to present of repeatedly invading countries and using military means to achieve geopolitical goals and making the world more conducive to its ambitions, with no regard for human life. Don't compare Germany to a country like the U.S. in this way because of what the Nazi Party did 80 years ago.

69 points by frozencell 4y ago

Not implying anything at all, but I am worried about potential spetsnaz sabotage operations on the territory of Europe or maybe even the US. Particularly against ammunition factories, storage, or important energy related infrastructure. Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_mystery_fires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_mystery_fires I am sure that people responsible for security of such objects are perfectly aware of the risks, but then the same must be true on the Russian side. Example from the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Vrb%C4%9Btice_ammunition_warehouses_explosions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Vrb%C4%9Btice_ammunition_...

blibble 4y ago
yeah, I suspect anything that disrputs the flow of LNG to Europe is a pretty high priority for russian agents in the US
- gonzo41 4y ago
  IF Russian spies are blowing up mainland US infrastructure, you can expect a massive escalation in Ukraine.
  - tomohawk 4y ago
    - hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
      You probably mistook Biden for Scholz.
      - jkIHGs 4y ago
        Germany and other European countries are the contained nuclear war location in case of an escalation. It is easy to support all sorts of things from another continent. De Gaulle also did not trust the U.S. precisely for this reason and chose to build nuclear weapons and avoid being under the NATO command structure.
        hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
        I'm not saying withholding certain types of heavy weapons is good or bad, I was just responding to the person saying that Biden doesn't want these weapons to be delivered, which seemed a bit misguided.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
akira2501 4y ago
Well.. it'd be a great time to skimp on maintenance and pocket that difference. Then when the inevitable happens, you can just shout "Russians!" More directly, I find this conspiratorial view hard to believe given the state of monopolization and infrastructure in the US. There is a much more logical explanation that should be eliminated first before this idea is even remotely entertained. As someone below mentioned.. if "escalation in Ukraine" is a potential outcome, then you should be very certain of what you claim or allow to be claimed.
- gruez 4y ago
  > Well.. it'd be a great time to skimp on maintenance and pocket that difference. Then when the inevitable happens, you can just shout "Russians!" except, that's not how natural gas plants work. Shouting "Russians!" doesn't pay the repair bills, nor does it make up for the lost revenue in the meantime.
  - akira2501 4y ago
    If you consider the impact on _one_ plant. If the loss of that plant drives prices up for all other plants, than it could easily be worth it.
    - pdabbadabba 4y ago
      But then why stage an incident? If your total profits rise when production at one plant stops, why not just shut down the plant—or reduce output across all plants? As far as I know, nobody is forcing them to over produce.
      - akira2501 4y ago
        A staged accident by foreign forces is the OP's wild assertion, I've made no such point. I'm suggesting that a more banal circumstance, lack of maintenance, and then a true accident, is much more likely. My point is that the current political environment makes deflecting blame in this situation a possibility, not that you would stage an accident to intentionally take advantage of it. How this is a harder idea to accept then "the russians are secretly blowing this up" is amazing to me, particularly on this forum.
jimbob45 4y ago
I’ll get a bit conspiratorial for a bit - the Russians just know that no sabotage may be allowed to be linked back to them. Otherwise, public support against them would immediately swell and every bad event would be speculated to have been caused by Russia. As such, it’s possible that this was Russia quietly trying to erode US/EU support for the war.
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
  But does any public support for Russia still exist at this point? Do they have anything to lose? What we witness now is a sad farce where half of what they say are lies - there is no war, they are liberating their own citizens, everybody is welcoming them with flowers, etc. The peak of absurdity is when they "caught" some Ukrainian terrorists in Russia with copies of The Sims game instead of SIM cards.[0] At this point, who cares what they say? And, the other way round, why should they say what the public in the West is saying? [0] https://nypost.com/2022/04/25/russia-appears-to-confuse-the-sims-for-sim-cards-in-possible-staged-assassination-attempt/ https://nypost.com/2022/04/25/russia-appears-to-confuse-the-...
  - dynamic_sausage 4y ago
    The note claimed to be found at these "terrorists'" place in the bottom photo of the link you posted goes: dedicated to blah-blah, kill to live and live to kill, signature not legible. That is, the actual words "signature not legible" instead of what an FSB higher-up probably wanted to be an inscrutable scrawl masquerading as the signature. Some of these FSB guys come straight from a Monty Python sketch.
    - pandaman 4y ago
      It's allegedly a nom de plume of some neo-nazi in Russia: https://sensaciy.net/divanniye-eksperti-razoblachili-silovikov-podpis-nerazborchiva/ https://sensaciy.net/divanniye-eksperti-razoblachili-silovik...
  - ratsforhorses 4y ago
    On youtube there's an American guy called Hinkle dishing out pro Russian viewpoint, I mean even Trump was a Putin apologist and under the veneer he's probably still got a grudge against Zelensky for his 2nd impeachment so I expect a lot of his believers hold similar twisted views... I mean even if on the surface people agree Putler is evil, many probably view the inflation of oil prices and their diminishing buying power (and their economy...whatever that means) as being caused by the said WAR rather than too much money being printed in 2020-21 to prop up all those poor airlines etc etc
everybodyknows 4y ago
Putin will remember another explosion well, happening in his early Soviet days. Search for: Siberia pipeline explosion Thomas C. Reed 1982
tomjen3 4y ago
I am not. Because if Russia does that, the west will have to declare war and then this shit is over. And if you are going to reply anything about nukes, don't. Neither the us or Russia will fire them.
- Fatnino 4y ago
  How do you see a match up like that ending? USA pushes Russia back to pre Crimea seizure borders? Why stop there? Why not go to the Volga? Ukraine reached almost all the way to the river before WWII. Maybe go all the way to the Caspian? Provide some security for Georgia and incidentally get A LOT of oil. At what point do you suppose Russia abandons its "no nukes" policy in this hypothetical conflict?
  - baybal2 4y ago
hulitu 4y ago
I am worried that guardian was a newspaper.
moistly 4y ago
It is said that the CIA sabotaged Russian pipelines back in Reagan’s day, using methods quite similar to their sabotage of Iran’s centrifuges: diddling the controller software. As I’m sure we all know, we have made the tragic mistake of connecting a lot of our own infrastructure to the internet: water treatment plants, electrical grid, pipelines, and more. All of which are, naturally, now susceptible to over-the-net attack. The spetsnaz needn’t do anything: Russian hackers can fuck it all up from the safety of their keyboards. https://www.wired.com/2004/03/soviets-burned-by-cia-hackers/ https://www.wired.com/2004/03/soviets-burned-by-cia-hackers/ https://www.npr.org/2011/05/09/135854490/inside-the-united-states-secret-sabotage-of-iran https://www.npr.org/2011/05/09/135854490/inside-the-united-s...
- throwoutway 4y ago
  > The spetsnaz needn’t do anything: Russian hackers can fuck it all up from the safety of their keyboards. For those who don’t believe it, look up the story of sandworm
supertrope 4y ago
Why sabotage in person when there are better options with plausible deniability? The Colonial Pipeline supply shock was started by criminal hackers in Russia using ransomware as a service. The company halted service to deal with the computer issue. Then traditional media and social media amplified panic buying. Russia says they arrested the extortionists. This is the country that brags about "patriotic hackers."

kurthr 4y ago

This is rare enough that I hope quite a bit of effort is put into figuring out exactly how it happened. There are many possibilities, but some of them are more/less avoidable and important for very different reasons.

01100011 4y ago
The most likely explanation is an industrial facility running close to 100% utilization, likely with reduced or poorly trained staff due to COVID and a tight labor market.

mateo1 4y ago

I am in awe that so far eu politicians are still reluctant to move back to whatever fossil fuels exist in the continent, and instead still push hard for the unachievable fantasy of an emissions-free europe. When is the renewables revolution coming? Well the energy transition better be over by October or we're in for an unfathomable crisis here in the old world.

bushbaba 4y ago
To be fair, if we leaned in on nuclear we'd be oil free. I'd much rather deal with highly concentrated nuclear waste than CO2 & Methane emissions
- mistrial9 4y ago
  > To be fair, if we leaned in on nuclear we'd be oil free no one knows that -- you think that Exxon and crew are ready to sit down ? They fired their Dutch CEO for trying to make the transition almost twenty years ago IIR As others in this thread say -- this change reveals the struggles between giants, not the quarrels of simple people in media that happens daily
- chki 4y ago
  Maybe if we had leaned in on nuclear 40-50 years ago. (Even then, Uranium does not grow on trees). But right now, that's not a viable option for the next thirty years. Industrial and Regulatory challenges are impossible to overcome in the timeframe that's needed.
  - bushbaba 4y ago
    The USGS has identified US thorium reserves that could meet the WORLD's energy for the next 138 years. I hope in 200 years when or if we run out of nuclear energy that we've managed to find alternative energy sources or leverage space mining. https://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1336/pdf/C1336.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1336/pdf/C1336.pdf
    - 4y ago

tomohawk 4y ago

This is the folly of turning off nukes and relying on intermittent power. It greatly increases the need for gas powered generators.

morsch 4y ago
Except in summer, when it's hot and dry enough again for France's nuclear power plants to turn intermittent, too.

fritigern 4y ago

It is a mistake for us to replace Russian gas with American gas.

jkIHGs 4y ago
I agree. Even if Russia is our worst enemy, depleting their resources first is quite a logical step. Would you want Russia to be the last country that still has oil reserves for its military? Replacing Russia with Qatar or Saudi Arabia (Jemen war?) is hypocritical. Replacing Russia with the U.S. gives the U.S. too much power over the EU. It can be used as a bargaining chip in unrelated negotiations like privacy rights etc.
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
  > Even if Russia is our worst enemy, depleting their resources first is quite a logical step. Would you want Russia to be the last country that still has oil reserves for its military? The fallacy in this reasoning is that with the money from the sales of gas Russia can - and is continuing to - arm themselves and conquer more land and kill more people. The Qatar is not engaged in killing thousands of people right now - if they were, we would not be buying oil from them, either, for the same reasons we are reducing our dependence on Russian gas.
  - jkIHGs 4y ago
    You did not address the reasoning, which is about the fact that the last country on earth with oil reserves will have a strategic advantage. Russia can always trade with China to have enough money for weapons. Anyway, even with all the Europe trade in the past decades they can barely advance 50 km in Ukraine.
    - hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
      > You did not address the reasoning, which is about the fact that the last country on earth with oil reserves will have a strategic advantage. I agree this is a problem, and hopefully its scale will be much lower in a few decades as we are moving away from fossil fuels. But even if we were consuming them rapidly as we are doing now, we are talking ca. 50 years for oil and natural gas. Whereas the danger from Russia is right now.

morninglight 4y ago

Was the LNG control system air-gapped, isolated and triple redundant? Or was it some fly-by-night "hot-backup" contraption tied to the internet? .

Kim_Bruning 4y ago
There definitely seems to be a dearth of competent IT people in industry in Europe in general. I wonder if the same is true in the USA.

lizardactivist 4y ago

coffeeblack 4y ago
Funding the invasion of a European country and the murder of countless Europeans doesn’t seem like a good option. What’s bad about gas from the US?
- toss1 4y ago
  [flagged]
- lizardactivist 4y ago
  Have you forgot how the U.S. has used its armed forces in the last 100 years? Buying U.S. gas possibly means funding the invasion of whatever country is next on the agenda, and the murder of countless civilians. How is that a good option?
  - mensetmanusman 4y ago
    If you go back 100 years that includes World War II…
    - lizardactivist 4y ago
      You're grasping.
  - coffeeblack 4y ago
    Should Germany stop exporting cars because of WWI + II then?
    - lizardactivist 4y ago
      The U.S. has a long history from past to present of repeatedly invading countries and using military means to achieve geopolitical goals and making the world more conducive to its ambitions, with no regard for human life. Don't compare Germany to a country like the U.S. in this way because of what the Nazi Party did 80 years ago.