Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea

forsvaret.dk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 1001 posts

Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea

#381

Post by aredox »

eloff wrote: post #113
tpmx wrote: 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…

So that doesn't look like an accident. I have difficulty imagining accidental ignition in an underwater gas pipeline. Where would the oxygen come from? Plus it's more than one explosion on the same day - can't be a coincidence. The next question is, who did it? It doesn't seem like something in Russia's interest, they've been wanting to get that pipeline approved and operational. They invested huge sums of money to b…

It is in Russia's interest: this is their last warning before the North Sea pipelines blow up too.

Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea

#382

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #338

To me, the most fascinating thing about this is the complete and utter uncertainty. Who is responsible, USA? Russia? Ukraine? Poland? Terrorists? No one? You'd think that in the 21st century, a piece of infrastructure getting blown up during a war, between two clearly defined sides, there wouldn't be nearly as much mystery surrounding the events.

It just happened. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea

#383

Post by vintermann »

jcranmer wrote: post #185
tpmx wrote: 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…

Assuming the explosions are relevant, some possible causes, ordered somewhat (but not entirely) by my personal estimation of likelihood: * Ecoterrorists -- I discount this mostly on the basis that they would have claimed responsibility by now. * NATO sabotage -- this reduces strategic options for several EU countries (albeit a strategic option that isn't really being exercised and is almost universally disfavored). *…

Russia wants NATO to stop giving Ukraine weapons, but they also really want to sell their gas to Europe. And they already controlled the spigot of the Nord Stream pipeline, so they wouldn't have to blow up anything to stop deliveries. Yes, the great powers have done some really stupid things, especially Russia, so it's dangerous to assume rationality, but they all like keeping their options open to a fault. "We're committing to belligerence, we won't even keep the option of letting you give up and bribe us" - does that sound like Putin's Russia?

The NATO as a whole likewise wouldn't blow up these pipelines, for pretty much the same reason. They love options too. But there's a lot of internal dissent in NATO, and it's quite possible that one member (read: the US) wanted to take away an option from another member (read: Germany), namely that option to cave in during the winter and give concessions to Russia in exchange for critically needed gas.

If they did, I'm quite sure Sweden was in on it. Even as a non-NATO member, they have been more deferential to US covert interests than most actual member states, including on torture rendition flights and the persecution of Assange. And it's sadly a bipartisan thing there.

Ukraine themselves would be another option. They certainly have an incentive to want to close off Western Europe's option to give concessions to Putin in exchange for gas, far more than any NATO member. But I don't think they have the capability to take out pipelines in the Baltic, especially not without US consent. But no, you can't blow up pipelines with like that cyberwarfare, and it's not going to fail three places at once.

I want to wait see who Russia places blame on, who the US places blame on, and most of all the actual evidence they can present. Maybe Russia will present non-laughable evidence for once, since I believe - again, for once! that they're actually not responsible this time.

But I wouldn't count on it. Actually I would be shocked.

Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea

#385

Post by throwrqX »

pphysch wrote: post #195
NeverFade wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The next question is, who did it? The Russians. > It doesn't seem like something in Russia's interest, they've been wanting to get that pipeline approved and operational. Once their invasion faltered, and with the recent escalation, they had no hope of that happening. The current Russian regime will never be able to repair relations with the west to the extent that will allow the Nordstream pipelines to resume oper…

The Russians blew up their own brand-new pipeline, which they spend billions creating (jointly with the Germans) and is one of the few major "hopes" to salvage that relationship, especially as winter dawns. That's frankly absurd. Russia almost certainly sabotaged a LNG terminal in Texas a few months ago (industrial cyberattack). This act was almost certainly done by Washington or their proxies. It drives the wedge fu…

I don't understand why people here seem to think Russia is acting rationally. The fact they continue the invasion when losing is clearly irrational. They threaten mass nuclear bombardment of Europe nearly daily. I don't see any long term rationality in Putin's government in the slightest.

There will be no salvaging the relationship between Germany and Russia for a long time unless Putin gets replaced, even during winter. The absolute worst case scenario (the only one I see where Germany could have gone to Russia for gas) where people die from cold in their homes is never going to happen. Only yesterday BloombergNEF published a report saying Europe was ready for a complete cut off from Russian gas from October 1, and that includes commercial uses too which take up a big chunk and would obviously be redirected should there be any threat of people dying of cold.

> Russia almost certainly sabotaged a LNG terminal in Texas a few months ago

What evidence is there for this?

> It drives the wedge further between EU and Russia

On the contrary, should the EU find that the US was behind the explosions it would cause an absolute rift between the US-EU relationship, and in particular with Germany.

Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea

#386

Post by rnk »

Kukumber wrote: post #235
zie wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure the US companies would love to sell more LNG, but my understanding is they don't have enough ships to sell them, i.e. they are selling every lb they can already and they just can't get capacity to sell more to the EU, which makes it a much less rational decision to do this.

That's the thing, there is high demand, and they have supply, they also can sell them contracts to build more infrastructure to increase the rate at wich supply is delivered Quickening the cut from gazprom is in their plan, considering: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/gazprom-says-groups-... We can all pretend and not see what's happening, but then you have this: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russia…

It's just ridiculous to claim that the US somehow sabotaged the pipeline to help LNG gas' future potential. There is infinite demand for LNG today, hugely unmet demand. It will take a least a decade of increased infrastructure and ships to get even close to meeting current European demand for natural gas. The world is not a James Bond movie. Obviously everyone is doing things to help Ukraine today. We are giving them billions in weapons, plus training, giving them money and intelligence, sending our advisors there. Lots of countries have given up greenhouse gas reductions temporarily hopefully, to handle the current emergency situation. The US govt wishes it had all this conspiratorial influence you imagine. The US has tried to talk the europeans out of depending on russian gas for decades. Of course we want all the customers we can find, but there's no shortage of customers! Geeze. The world loves oil and gas so much you don't need to sabotage alternatives to get more customers.

Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea

#387

Post by NeverFade »

jpfr wrote: post #192
NeverFade wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The next question is, who did it? The Russians. > It doesn't seem like something in Russia's interest, they've been wanting to get that pipeline approved and operational. Once their invasion faltered, and with the recent escalation, they had no hope of that happening. The current Russian regime will never be able to repair relations with the west to the extent that will allow the Nordstream pipelines to resume oper…

That doesn't make any sense. If the Russians wanted to stop the gas supply, they could just stop supplying gas. And they had already stopped. Destroying the infrastructure doesn't give Russia an additional capability (degree of freedom). It removes the degree of freedom to restart supplying gas. And thus removes this option for Russia to use as a bargaining chip in negotiations. I would say this is either the US, Ukr…

> It removes the degree of freedom to restart supplying gas.

Have you been following the news? The current Russian regime is threatening the use of nuclear weapons, and massacring thousands in war crimes in Ukraine.

The EU has already set up permanent alternatives to Russian gas: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-27/europe-is...

The current Russian regime will never be able to repair relations with the west to the extent that will allow the Nordstream pipelines to resume operations.

The next regime might be able to repair relations, but the current regime doesn't care about that: they'll be dead or imprisoned for life before any new regime can take over.

With the EU shifting to other permanent sources for its energy supply, it's doubtful they'll want to switch back to Russian gas ever. Getting burned once by a rogue regime using gas supply for leverage is quite enough.

Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea

#388

Post by vintermann »

tgv wrote: post #213
jcranmer wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming the explosions are relevant, some possible causes, ordered somewhat (but not entirely) by my personal estimation of likelihood: * Ecoterrorists -- I discount this mostly on the basis that they would have claimed responsibility by now. * NATO sabotage -- this reduces strategic options for several EU countries (albeit a strategic option that isn't really being exercised and is almost universally disfavored). *…

None of these make much sense. It's pretty idle to speculate, and the list is most likely incomplete and inaccurate. It only feeds the trolls. Then again, this whole thread is full of fingerpointing without evidence. If HN can't contain itself, what won't the twitter and facebook, and –may God forget– Truth Social do?

I think it's good to try to think clearly about these things, lay out the reasonable possibilities. It's the healthiest coping strategy in a frankly worrying situation. Better to risk saying something stupid, and potentially get corrected, than to just go with the default flow of however media decides to spin this.

Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea

#389

Post by Const-me »

gruez wrote: post #360
Const-me wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it would have to be extremely substandard to have failed this quickly Yes, but that’s assuming proper maintenance. Russia doesn’t have domestic technology to build or maintain complicated infrastructure like these undersea pipelines. International sanctions against Russia are rather wide. For instance, Halliburton (a US oil field service company) no longer operates in Russia: https://www.halliburton.com/en/about-us…

>It’s possible these sanctions affected the ability of Russians to maintain the pipeline, which might cause that thing to fail prematurely. even assuming they were cut off the moment the invasions began, are pipelines really that fragile that they explode if they're not maintained for 6 months?

The pressure in these pipes is rather high. Wikipedia [1] writes the nominal for these underwater pipes is 3200 psi. To compare, peak cylinder pressure in a gasoline car at full load is about 1000 psi, large heavy duty diesel engines peak at 2500 psi. A pipe failure at 3200 psi internal pressure might cause an accident similar to an explosion.

Still, you raised a good point. I have no idea how fragile these pipes really are. Apparently, Swedish police is investigating sabotage [2], we might get an answer eventually.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream#Baltic_Sea_offshor...

[2] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/swedish-police-investigating-...

Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea

#390

Post by throwrqX »

pphysch wrote: post #279
FiberBundle wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not that absurd. The fact that it looks entirely irrational for Russia to do this is exactly why they might have done it. Their intent is to cause division in the West. They could potentially hope for EU countries to blame the US or Ukraine for this. If you read Twitter trends you already see an army of Russian bots pushing the theory that the US has done this.

> The fact that it looks entirely irrational for Russia to do this is exactly why they might have done it. Any analysis predicated on "the enemy is perfectly irrational and will not act according their interests" is not analysis. It's untethered from reality, which is convenient, because you can support any conclusion you desire. Robert McNamara's #1 life lesson was "empathize with your enemy" (he dealt with the Cuba…

People like Michael McFaul is exactly why the invasion happened in the first place because the Obama admin was weak on Russia after the 2014 invasion. They are the opposite of ideologues.
Post reply on HN