7 ms·

It is exceedingly unlikely that this is an accident, seeing as no less than three separate pipelines were punctured at different locations within hours of each

by lb1lf 4y ago

It is exceedingly unlikely that this is an accident, seeing as no less than three separate pipelines were punctured at different locations within hours of each other. While none of the pipelines were currently operational, this basically ensures that even if some agreement could be reached with Russia to resume gas imports (not very likely!), it will not be possible in the short term, seeing as the operator claims damages of an unparallelled scale, without going into details. Presumably this means security around the new Norway-Poland gas pipeline to be opened one of these days is tightened. The seas it runs through are very shallow, so if throwing sufficient resources on it, it should be possible to keep anything larger than a herring from getting close without being noticed.

netsharc 4y ago
If I could put on my amateur geo-political-analyst hat for a moment, who could be behind this and why? Seems like a Putin move, since he dared using (probably) a sub in other nations' waters. Reason? To show Europe he means business? To show Europe he's not planning to rewind anything to the way things were in 2021?
- lb1lf 4y ago
  If one is of a sufficiently dark view, it may even be some western power wishing to drive home the point that Russia will not - full stop - export gas in any significant quantity to Europe anytime soon. I would believe it more likely to be the Russians testing the waters, so to speak - finding out how far you can go sabotaging infrastructure. After all, starting with two non-operational pipelines makes consequences less severe at both ends, while gaining the perpetrator some experience how to evade detection. (Which may come in handy later!)
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > it may even be some western power wishing to drive home the point that Russia will not - full stop - export gas in any significant quantity to Europe anytime soon Then it would be incompetent. There is political resolve against Russia in Europe. Keeping the ability to bomb the pipes is one thing. Doing it in the midst of that resolve would be self defeating.
    - lb1lf 4y ago
      -But that resolve is feared to be weakened by falling temperatures in Continental Europe. Surely it cannot be completely outside the realm of the possible that Someone(tm) helped EU politicians do The Right Thing(tm) by ensuring they couldn't give in to Russian demands this winter even if they'd wanted to? (I believe this one's on the Russians - but I can see other actors finding it beneficial that Russian exports cannot easily be resumed. Especially as long as the Kremlin denying it had anything to do with something is largely seen as evidence it did indeed have something to do with it.)
      - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > it cannot be completely outside the realm of the possible that Someone(tm) helped EU politicians do The Right Thing(tm) by ensuring they couldn't give in to Russian demands this winter even if they'd wanted to? Could be. But doing it now and like this (three simultaneous incidents that are also highly repairable) would be stupid. If it’s American it’s because placed mines went off early.
        lb1lf 4y ago
        -Easily repairable may be a stretch, it is my understanding there are no shutoff valves along the length of the pipeline, so if they're all breached (4 pipes, each ~1200km long, slightly over 1m in diameter) then that's about 5B liters of water which needs to be pumped out after whatever damage done where they were punctured has been repaired. (Presumably the water inrush is slowed by the escaping gas sufficiently so that the pipeline doesn't sustain further damage, but I'm just guessing. Being an electrical engineer this is way outside what I dabble with on a day-to-day basis)
- aa-jv 4y ago
  I'm curious why you're avoiding the obvious party: the USA did this. Biden even stated he would do it. https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-germanys-scholz-stress-unified-front-against-any-russian-aggression-toward-2022-02-07/ https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-germanys-scholz-stress-u...
  - nradov 4y ago
    It's impossible to completely rule out some sort of US sponsored covert action, but that seems highly unlikely. The risks outweigh any possible rewards. If the operation went wrong and got exposed the political fallout would be catastrophic. Right now the US is the only country really "winning" the war in Ukraine so there's no need to do anything so crazy.
    - bskan 4y ago
      The US has done terrible things nonstop the past decades and it hasn’t suffered from any kind of political fallout.
      - spacemadness 4y ago
    - bearmode 4y ago
      > If the operation went wrong and got exposed the political fallout would be catastrophic. No worse than the US blatantly overthrowing numerous democratically-elected governments. There was zero fallout for any of that.
      - aa-jv 4y ago
        The US has long considered itself immune to criticism when it comes to crimes against humanity, such as this. Watching Americans fall over themselves to deny this fact is not fun, at all. It seems we are indeed destined for further fallout as a result ..
  - deleted 4y ago
- iampivot 4y ago
  It could also be Putins way of saying; see what I can do. I can do the same to the pipelines from Norway. There has been a lot of unidentified drone sightings in the Norwegian part of the North Sea in the last week.
- rurban 4y ago
  There are two scenarios. 1. Ukraine or pro-Ukrainian forces. 2. Russia. Attack the gas market which just settled, and raise the prices again.
  - lb1lf 4y ago
    There is another option which is being discussed in Norwegian media now - that the Russians have used the pipelines essentially for storage of excess gas (Seeing as the pipelines are basically, combined, a 5M cubic meter pressure vessel) That would go a long way towards explaining how several ruptures happened in relatively short succession - pipes being loaded up with too much gas (after all, the more gas stored, the more money in the bank for later on!) Once the first one burst, someone probably re-evaluated that idea, but letting off gas in sufficient quantities fast enough may not have been possible. Of course, if this was indeed the case, I assume it will very soon be very evident - I can't imagine that the rupture caused by an external force will be indistinguishable from that of it rupturing due to overpressure.
durnygbur 4y ago
Coincidentally the Baltic Pipe becomes operational this week, might as well be a larger international operation. Operation which Putin with Schröder will certainly not like, and which will give hiccups to Merkel.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ShuffleBoard 4y ago
Metastable scenario is metastable. Which quantum of energy or momentum broke the metastability is simply not an important question. Peter Zeihan has repeatedly pointed out that permanently ending Russian oil exports is now within the reach of even Latvia's navy.
yucky 4y ago
Occam's razor applies here. In the past, militaries would burn the boats and bridges behind them to ensure no retreat within their ranks. So now it doesn't matter how cold it gets this winter, you will ride with the US/NATO on this adventure whether you like it or not.
- TheFattestNinja 4y ago
  Occam razor here would be internal fighting about Russia factions. The cost/benefit of getting discovered vs not here are not in favor of any external NATO-ish player since there is already enough cohesion, while getting caught would be catastrophic. Literally little to gain and all to lose. And the temporal difference between the reported seismic events is also against the idea of an external country doing it: you wouldn't wait that long between events since it would massively increase the risk of getting discovered. If you are doing a proper sabotage you'd have events close to each other (30m or so) or very spread (days away)
  - yucky 4y ago
    The US/NATO/Ukraine has 100% control over the media narrative in the West, it would be impossible to "get caught". Anything that comes out that is against the desired narrative is simply waved away as Russian propaganda.

by lb1lf 4y ago

netsharc 4y ago

If I could put on my amateur geo-political-analyst hat for a moment, who could be behind this and why? Seems like a Putin move, since he dared using (probably) a sub in other nations' waters. Reason? To show Europe he means business? To show Europe he's not planning to rewind anything to the way things were in 2021?

lb1lf 4y ago
If one is of a sufficiently dark view, it may even be some western power wishing to drive home the point that Russia will not - full stop - export gas in any significant quantity to Europe anytime soon. I would believe it more likely to be the Russians testing the waters, so to speak - finding out how far you can go sabotaging infrastructure. After all, starting with two non-operational pipelines makes consequences less severe at both ends, while gaining the perpetrator some experience how to evade detection. (Which may come in handy later!)
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > it may even be some western power wishing to drive home the point that Russia will not - full stop - export gas in any significant quantity to Europe anytime soon Then it would be incompetent. There is political resolve against Russia in Europe. Keeping the ability to bomb the pipes is one thing. Doing it in the midst of that resolve would be self defeating.
  - lb1lf 4y ago
    -But that resolve is feared to be weakened by falling temperatures in Continental Europe. Surely it cannot be completely outside the realm of the possible that Someone(tm) helped EU politicians do The Right Thing(tm) by ensuring they couldn't give in to Russian demands this winter even if they'd wanted to? (I believe this one's on the Russians - but I can see other actors finding it beneficial that Russian exports cannot easily be resumed. Especially as long as the Kremlin denying it had anything to do with something is largely seen as evidence it did indeed have something to do with it.)
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > it cannot be completely outside the realm of the possible that Someone(tm) helped EU politicians do The Right Thing(tm) by ensuring they couldn't give in to Russian demands this winter even if they'd wanted to? Could be. But doing it now and like this (three simultaneous incidents that are also highly repairable) would be stupid. If it’s American it’s because placed mines went off early.
      - lb1lf 4y ago
        -Easily repairable may be a stretch, it is my understanding there are no shutoff valves along the length of the pipeline, so if they're all breached (4 pipes, each ~1200km long, slightly over 1m in diameter) then that's about 5B liters of water which needs to be pumped out after whatever damage done where they were punctured has been repaired. (Presumably the water inrush is slowed by the escaping gas sufficiently so that the pipeline doesn't sustain further damage, but I'm just guessing. Being an electrical engineer this is way outside what I dabble with on a day-to-day basis)
aa-jv 4y ago
I'm curious why you're avoiding the obvious party: the USA did this. Biden even stated he would do it. https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-germanys-scholz-stress-unified-front-against-any-russian-aggression-toward-2022-02-07/ https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-germanys-scholz-stress-u...
- nradov 4y ago
  It's impossible to completely rule out some sort of US sponsored covert action, but that seems highly unlikely. The risks outweigh any possible rewards. If the operation went wrong and got exposed the political fallout would be catastrophic. Right now the US is the only country really "winning" the war in Ukraine so there's no need to do anything so crazy.
  - bskan 4y ago
    The US has done terrible things nonstop the past decades and it hasn’t suffered from any kind of political fallout.
    - spacemadness 4y ago
  - bearmode 4y ago
    > If the operation went wrong and got exposed the political fallout would be catastrophic. No worse than the US blatantly overthrowing numerous democratically-elected governments. There was zero fallout for any of that.
    - aa-jv 4y ago
      The US has long considered itself immune to criticism when it comes to crimes against humanity, such as this. Watching Americans fall over themselves to deny this fact is not fun, at all. It seems we are indeed destined for further fallout as a result ..
- deleted 4y ago
iampivot 4y ago
It could also be Putins way of saying; see what I can do. I can do the same to the pipelines from Norway. There has been a lot of unidentified drone sightings in the Norwegian part of the North Sea in the last week.
rurban 4y ago
There are two scenarios. 1. Ukraine or pro-Ukrainian forces. 2. Russia. Attack the gas market which just settled, and raise the prices again.
- lb1lf 4y ago
  There is another option which is being discussed in Norwegian media now - that the Russians have used the pipelines essentially for storage of excess gas (Seeing as the pipelines are basically, combined, a 5M cubic meter pressure vessel) That would go a long way towards explaining how several ruptures happened in relatively short succession - pipes being loaded up with too much gas (after all, the more gas stored, the more money in the bank for later on!) Once the first one burst, someone probably re-evaluated that idea, but letting off gas in sufficient quantities fast enough may not have been possible. Of course, if this was indeed the case, I assume it will very soon be very evident - I can't imagine that the rupture caused by an external force will be indistinguishable from that of it rupturing due to overpressure.

durnygbur 4y ago

Coincidentally the Baltic Pipe becomes operational this week, might as well be a larger international operation. Operation which Putin with Schröder will certainly not like, and which will give hiccups to Merkel.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ShuffleBoard 4y ago

Metastable scenario is metastable. Which quantum of energy or momentum broke the metastability is simply not an important question. Peter Zeihan has repeatedly pointed out that permanently ending Russian oil exports is now within the reach of even Latvia's navy.

yucky 4y ago

Occam's razor applies here. In the past, militaries would burn the boats and bridges behind them to ensure no retreat within their ranks. So now it doesn't matter how cold it gets this winter, you will ride with the US/NATO on this adventure whether you like it or not.

TheFattestNinja 4y ago
Occam razor here would be internal fighting about Russia factions. The cost/benefit of getting discovered vs not here are not in favor of any external NATO-ish player since there is already enough cohesion, while getting caught would be catastrophic. Literally little to gain and all to lose. And the temporal difference between the reported seismic events is also against the idea of an external country doing it: you wouldn't wait that long between events since it would massively increase the risk of getting discovered. If you are doing a proper sabotage you'd have events close to each other (30m or so) or very spread (days away)
- yucky 4y ago
  The US/NATO/Ukraine has 100% control over the media narrative in the West, it would be impossible to "get caught". Anything that comes out that is against the desired narrative is simply waved away as Russian propaganda.