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Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea

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Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea

#101
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the US care if they were seen as doing it when they already announced that they were going to do it[1]? 1. https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1490792461979078662

This would probably be helped by some kind of citation, or at least an explanation of what is meant here.

[deleted]

Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea

#102
post #3

More details: Although neither was in operation, both pipelines [Nordstream 1 and 2] still contained gas under pressure. Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said the leaks were caused by sabotage, while his Danish counterpart Mette Frederiksen said it was “hard to imagine” they were a “coincidence”. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/27/sweden-issues-warni...

Sabotage makes sense, but by whom? Surely Russia has no interest in sabotaging the pipelines that give them leverage over Europe. Without the pipelines, the whole "you lift the sanctions, we deliver natural gas" game is gone. Even if unlikely to happen, it would have been an important psychological and political factor over the winter. Meanwhile European powers don't seem to have an incentive. They would benefit from…

Russia has a motivation to kill the pipelines now, to increase gas prices now, as NS1 & NS2 are NOT the only paths to get gas to the EU. Since they are already down for "maintenance" (and we actually know some maintenance is needed), it would be a good tactical move to kill the possibility of NS1 & NS2 delivering gas, increase focus on the crisis now, and hope that this scares the EU into stopping supporting Ukraine.

Norway also reported drone sightings on their oil & gas fields. It would be very tactical for Putin to start taking out all EU supplies as much as practical, since he obviously cannot win on the battlefield.

My feeling is that this will backfire in the current information environment, in the short term only enraging the victims by making clear who is the enemy creating the misery, and in the long term giving politicians justification to say that Russia is an unreliable supplier. It can only work as long as there is a mystery about who is taking out supplies, and if any other facility than Russia's own are taken out, everyone knows that the culprit is Russia.

Also, Russia is so good at this that they have a word for it: "provokatsiya" or "provocation", 'A political event staged by an intelligence service on behalf of its government in order to accomplish some political goal. '.[1]

Russia also has extensive submarine capabilities and ports on the Baltic Sea. [2]

Means, motive, opportunity. That's my bet right now, given limited open source information.

[0] https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Norway-In...

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/provokatsiya

[2] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Russian-Ports-in-the-Bal...

Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea

#103
post #54

The Swedish national seismic network picked up two explosions within kilometers of the reported gas leak locations yesterday. The time of the first explosion: Yesterday, Monday morning at 02:03 am, second one Monday evening at 7:04pm (local time, CEST). The reports of the gas leaks came at 1:52pm and 8:41pm, respectively - by means of ships reporting bubbling at the surface level. One of the two events registered at…

In a radio interview Björn Lund also says it was a relativly large explosion, equivalent to "a couple of hundred kg of dynamite".

Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea

#104
post #3

More details: Although neither was in operation, both pipelines [Nordstream 1 and 2] still contained gas under pressure. Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said the leaks were caused by sabotage, while his Danish counterpart Mette Frederiksen said it was “hard to imagine” they were a “coincidence”. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/27/sweden-issues-warni...

Sabotage makes sense, but by whom? Surely Russia has no interest in sabotaging the pipelines that give them leverage over Europe. Without the pipelines, the whole "you lift the sanctions, we deliver natural gas" game is gone. Even if unlikely to happen, it would have been an important psychological and political factor over the winter. Meanwhile European powers don't seem to have an incentive. They would benefit from…

The central long-term economic goal of the US in Europe has been to shift European energy consumption from Russia to the the US and allied producers. On the short term, sabotaging the pipelines prevents lifting the sanctions imposed on Europe (i.e. opening the pipelines) which would also tend to decrease profits on each LNG tanker.

> "The United States, the world's top natural gas producer, wants to send more liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe to help its allies break their dependence on Russian gas after Moscow invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24." (Jul 2022)

https://www.marinelink.com/news/us-ship-lng-europe-498028

In addition, disabling Nordstream 2 is a stated US agenda, right from Biden:

> " US officials have made clear that they would move to suspend Nord Stream 2 if Russian President Vladimir Putin orders an invasion of Ukraine. They’ve been much less specific on how that would be accomplished. “I promise you, we’ll be able to do it,” Biden said Monday when pressed for more details. "

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/08/business/nord-stream-2-german...

Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea

#105
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sabotage makes sense, but by whom? Surely Russia has no interest in sabotaging the pipelines that give them leverage over Europe. Without the pipelines, the whole "you lift the sanctions, we deliver natural gas" game is gone. Even if unlikely to happen, it would have been an important psychological and political factor over the winter. Meanwhile European powers don't seem to have an incentive. They would benefit from…

> Surely Russia has no interest in sabotaging the pipelines that give them leverage over Europe. Apart from a false-flag operation by Putin to have a casus belli to start a war with NATO? Normally, that would be suicide. But Putin has already proven that he, to put it diplomatically, does not see the world the way most sane people see it.

Ukraine invasion showed that Russia really doesn’t need much in a way of excuse to start a war.

I don’t understand why people talk about “casus beli” as if life today was Europa Universalis game. When power want to start a war, they do.

Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea

#107
post #3

More details: Although neither was in operation, both pipelines [Nordstream 1 and 2] still contained gas under pressure. Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said the leaks were caused by sabotage, while his Danish counterpart Mette Frederiksen said it was “hard to imagine” they were a “coincidence”. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/27/sweden-issues-warni...

Sabotage makes sense, but by whom? Surely Russia has no interest in sabotaging the pipelines that give them leverage over Europe. Without the pipelines, the whole "you lift the sanctions, we deliver natural gas" game is gone. Even if unlikely to happen, it would have been an important psychological and political factor over the winter. Meanwhile European powers don't seem to have an incentive. They would benefit from…

> Sabotage makes sense, but by whom?

President Biden on Nord Stream 2 Pipeline if Russia Invades Ukraine: "We will bring an end to it."

Initially I thought it's a mistake. Russian company took over the German one after the sanctions on NS2, so they could screw something up, but there are too many leaks. It's 100% sabotage.

> Meanwhile European powers don't seem to have an incentive

Poland, Belarus have. Yamal is becoming critical as well as Brotherhood (Ukraine).

> That would leave Europe's non-Russian suppliers of natural gas: Norway and the US.

Algeria, Azerbaijan, Canada, UEA, Qatar etc.

Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea

#108
post #4

I read talks of sabotage but I struggle to understand the point, surely russia wouldn’t sabotage their own pipelines (they can just shut them) and I understand they are not in use right now. In fact doesn’t that mean that the pipeline will be flooded? Is that recoverable?

Russia is looking for all shorts.of excuses to escalate

I don't think Russia has any interest in escalating.

Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sabotage makes sense, but by whom? Surely Russia has no interest in sabotaging the pipelines that give them leverage over Europe. Without the pipelines, the whole "you lift the sanctions, we deliver natural gas" game is gone. Even if unlikely to happen, it would have been an important psychological and political factor over the winter. Meanwhile European powers don't seem to have an incentive. They would benefit from…

Quoted post unavailable.

I don't think we would do this, we have enough problems of our own that both, take precedence over Ukraine, and are frustrated by the Ukrainian situation. Looked at in a certain light, we're incentivized to stay out of this. That said, our policymakers have shown themselves in the recent past to be, well, not the brightest bulbs. So anything is possible.

But this just smells like different nations in Europe going rogue. Probably good intentions, but it strikes at the national interests of other European nations. It's an escalation as, previously, dual interest assets were not targeted explicitly for the purposes of keeping all western nations aligned.

They are playing with fire at this point. I hope we don't get dragged down with these people.

Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea

#110
post #54

The Swedish national seismic network picked up two explosions within kilometers of the reported gas leak locations yesterday. The time of the first explosion: Yesterday, Monday morning at 02:03 am, second one Monday evening at 7:04pm (local time, CEST). The reports of the gas leaks came at 1:52pm and 8:41pm, respectively - by means of ships reporting bubbling at the surface level. One of the two events registered at…

Act of war by USA? (equivalent if done through ally)

Why would the US do that?
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