The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, transporting natural gas to Europe from Russia, have ruptured, causing natural gas to pour into the Baltic Sea. Strong indications suggest that an act of sabotage caused the damage. Both pipelines, currently inactive but containing unspecified amounts of gas, suffered a series of leaks in different locations, prompting many to suspect sabotage. Seismologists also detected a series of underwater blasts before the leaks were detected.
“The first of three explosions were detected early Monday southeast of the Danish Island of Bornholm,” said Bjorn Lund, director of the Swedish National Seismic Network. “A second, stronger blast northeast of the island that night was equivalent to a magnitude-2.3 earthquake. Seismic stations in Denmark, Norway, and Finland also registered the explosions. There’s no doubt this is not an earthquake,” Lund said.”
“A “conservative estimate” based on available data suggests the leaks together were releasing more than 500 metric tons of methane per hour when first breached, with the pressure and flow rate decreasing over time,” says Jean-Francois Gauthier, vice president of measurements at the commercial methane-measuring satellite firm GHGSat. “Releasing that amount in entirety to the atmosphere would result in around 200,000 tons of methane emissions,” says chemical engineer Paul Balcombe at London’s Queen Mary University. To put this into perspective, it’s about the same amount of carbon dioxide emissions as you’d experience in a year in a mid-sized city such as Helsinki, the capital of Finland, which has a metropolitan population of about 1.5 million.
The Central Intelligence Agency had warned the German government last June about potential attacks against the pipeline. Many European leaders quickly blamed Vladimir Putin and pointed to the ongoing energy stalemate between Russia and Europe. Former Polish Defense Minister, Radek Sikorski, has accused the United States of the damage to the two pipelines, “Thank you, USA,” Sikorski wrote on Twitter. Sikorski is currently an elected member of the European parliament.
There has been no timetable established yet for repair to both pipelines.
