Nordstream Pipeline Explosion
Sabotage or Unlucky Accident?
So, this week as I was writing the review post, I spent some time exploring the question of what exactly happened on the Nordstream pipeline this past Monday. Obviously, I’m a conspiratorial libertarian and my bias on what happened is probably pretty predictable for you. But I wanted to get a bigger picture of whether it’s possible that an accident could have caused this.
In a past life, I was project manager for energy infrastructure, and part of that experience included sub-sea infrastructure. So I reached out to a few engineers I had worked with previously to see if they could walk me through the possibility that this was actually an accident. Thankfully, one of my contacts was willing to speak with me about the subject, I used what he told me to create a potential string of events that would have lead to the unluckiest geo-political accident possible.
I’m going to lay this out in two separate cases. One is the typical conspiratorial take about this being an act of sabotage. The 2nd will be a fairly strong case that this could have been an accident as well. It’s up to you to make up your mind on which is true.
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Table of Contents
The Facts
Sabotage?
Or an Unlucky Accident?
Conclusion
1. The Facts
So it looks like the conflict between Russia and the West is not going to end or de-escalate any time soon. During the week on my instagram I covered the explosions on the Nordstream pipelines when the information was still fresh for me.
When I had initially heard about the pressure drop on the pipelines, I had presumed it was due to a failure of maintenance. Russia lacks some of the more sophisticated production capabilities to maintain the turbines and equipment that maintain pressure and flow in sub-sea pipelines. I had presumed that something had broken, after all the pipeline was already in a strained position for maintenance and was going to break eventually without new parts from the West. So I ignored the news for the first ~18 hours, until we started getting information that a second leak occurred on the other pipeline and video began emerging. It became even more clear something big had happened when seismic events had been registered by the Swedes and the Danes.
The seismic events measured weren’t large enough to cause damage to the pipelines if their origin was an earthquake. The pipeline isn’t exactly a fragile thing. The pipeline has a steel and concrete coating whose thickness varies from 3.5 inches to 6 inches thick, if you’re an engineer or highly analytical, you can read the public design specs here.
Like all infrastructure with significant potential insurance liabilities in the case of failure, it was designed to last and be able to withstand use and any sort of damage it might take on the sea floor. Each pipeline consists of two parallel pipes. So Nordstream 1 was two pipes running side by side to Germany, and Nordstream 2 was also two pipes running parallel to Germany.
On Monday, a “seismic event” occurred at 2:03 AM Central European Summer Time. A second event followed ~17 hours later. Both events were near the Danish Island of Bornholm, 1 occurred on the Nordstream 1 pipeline, the other occurred on the Nordstream 2 pipeline. To the best of my understanding, 3 of the 4 pipes in the two projects were destroyed and have been leaking into the baltic sea. At the time of the explosion no gas was being delivered via either pipeline, however the pipelines always stay pressurized so there is always gas present within the pipelines.
Because the pipelines were pressurized, the gas within the lines escaped into the sea until the pressure equalized.
The Swedes, and the Danes were convinced that the seismic events were explosions and reacted as such. The Danes mobilized a navy frigate to their sub-sea energy infrastructure and issued an orange security alert for their energy sector. It’s quite unlikely that these two events were an act of nature, and by the time you read this, I suspect that the entire world will be of the opinion that this was sabotage.
2. Sabotage?
But who would do such a thing, and more importantly, does it even matter who did it? Pretend you’re in a room with 1 other person. Someone farts. You both know who did it. 3rd parties observing from another room don’t know, and won’t know unless one of you admits to it, which neither will. In this case, all of us are the 3rd parties watching from another room, while Russia and NATO are both pointing fingers at each other saying the other did it. Someone is lying. But for you and I watching, all that actually matters is what’s going to happen next.
At the time of the explosion, Russia was not delivering gas through either pipeline to Germany, however protests in Germany were rising for NordStream 2 to be opened as Germans were worried about rising energy prices continuing into the winter. Could these protesters have been part of a larger political bloc within Germany? Yes, they are, and with the pipelines destroyed, what can this political bloc push for now? We previously discussed AfD (Alternative für Deutschland - Alternative for Germany, a right wing Euro-skeptic party) back in July, if you want more background, you can read it here.
Meanwhile, the day after the Nordstream 1 and 2 were blown up, a pipeline connecting Natural gas from Norway to the European continent opened and began operations.
The Nordstream pipelines and gas to Germany was one of Russia’s main bargaining chips in the conflict. Now the only pipelines they have to Europe are overland. When Russia sends natural gas and oil by pipeline, they have to pay transit fees to the countries the pipelines cross for each gallon/cubic foot transported. You’ll note that the bulk of overland pipelines to Europe from Russia cross over Ukraine and Poland, with Ukraine holding the largest share.
So all of Russia’s fee-free gas infrastructure was just blown up, and the NordStream 2 had only just completed construction but had not started deliveries yet. Now Poland and Ukraine control the flow of natural gas from Russia to western Europe, and Russia has lost one of its major bargaining chips right at the point in time when they would have had the most leverage over Germany.
So, we’re looking into this room and both sides are pointing fingers at each other claiming the other one farted. Who farted? I ask again, Who farted?
We don’t know, and we can’t know, but NATO gas suppliers and US LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) suppliers are likely going to be in control of Europe’s energy market for quite a while to come, and will probably make a ton of money as the price of gas on the European continent will not be going down anytime soon. There is a clear party who benefitted here. And old comments from Joe Biden back in February allude to the potential that the US government could/would destroy the pipeline before it was operational if Russia ever invaded Ukraine.
Not to mention that directly after the explosion, a Polish politician thanked the US on twitter.
That tweet has since been deleted, but the taste it left in the mouth of the public watching events unfold has turned a decent portion of the public opinion towards sabotage, and more specifically western sabotage. Not to mention, as we stated before, the west stood to benefit the most from this explosion.
It also should be mentioned, that the CIA has sabotaged Russian pipelines in the past to cause an explosion, so this wouldn’t be out of character.
But wait, a gas pipeline under pressure is exactly the kind of thing that could blow up in the case of a catastrophic failure, so was this sabotage…
3. Or an Unlucky Accident?
So my friend would like to remain relatively anonymous, but for some background he has 10+ years of experience and is currently the technical manager for the oil and gas branch of a Norwegian naval engineering and shipbuilding company. This is probably already enough information for you to plausibly find him if you have already found me on Linkedin, but I have over 1,000 contacts so good luck.
I’ve covered the topic of Russia not having the sophisticated manufacturing infrastructure required to be able to maintain these pipelines without imports from Western nations already. The Nordstream 1 pipeline has been on and off all year as it’s been trying to keep running despite being unable to maintain the turbines that keep the gas pressurized, maintain flow, and extract moisture from the gas. Losing access to sophisticated manufacturing is a big deal, but it takes longer to emerge as a problem than the west losing access to oil and gas.
Now consider this fact, the explosions occurred 17 hours apart. If you were going to plant explosives on a pipeline like this as a clandestine action, would you really time them blow up with that much time in between?
The Nordstream pipeline typically performed annual maintenance in the summer, here is their maintenance announcement from 2020, from 2021, and they even made an announcement for mid-July 2022. However after their annual maintenance in 2022, (which I presume probably would have included a few items which were impossible to get due to sanctions), we see the pipeline shutting down numerous times in the months of August and September, with Nordstream 1 eventually shut down indefinitely in September.
But why are maintenance parts so crucial on a sub-sea gas pipeline? Well, in order to transport Natural Gas (Methane) over long distances, it has to be pressurized. It’s not uncommon for natural gas deposits to include water within them, and it’s crucial to remove this water from the Natural gas before transporting it, otherwise it can form what is called a Methane Hydrate.
As per Science Direct:
Methane hydrate (MH) is a solid compound in which a large amount of methane gas molecules (CH4) are caged within a crystalline structure of water, as illustrated in Fig. 7.1, under low temperature and high pressure, forming a solid similar to ice [1]. It looks like ice, but starts burning when an open flame is brought close to it; methane hydrate is often called “fiery ice.”
Fiery ice? Sounds cool right? It can be; finding methane hydrates in the wild, especially on property you own would probably be exciting, but finding it inside of your pressurized pipeline is a huge problem, which is why it’s imperative to make sure that the methane is as dehydrated as it possibly can be before pumping it into a pipeline, otherwise these can form in your pipeline and create a blockage.
Please now note, that the turbine Gazprom needed was scheduled to Arrive on July 24th, and to become operational in early August. I would 100% bet that the replacement of this turbine was supposed to occur during the July 2022 maintenance and never did. I also would bet that means the turbines Gazprom was running anyways were operating outside of their design life in the months of August and September, which is probably why gas output through Nordstream 1 was only ~20% of capacity for the periods when the pipeline was online in August and September. This lines up with Gazprom’s story that they were losing operational turbines. The NordStream 1 requires 6 turbines at the compressor station to maintain 220 atmospheres of pressure to push the gas through the pipeline. As turbines go offline, the volume of gas that can be pushed through the pipeline while maintaining pressure drops. Meaning that gas moves slower and slower through the pipeline. Hydrates form as a function of pressure and temperature and of course, time. At the time of the accident, the pipelines were only maintaining 100 atmospheres of pressure, which is the minimum working pressure of the compressor station.
The Nordstream 1 pipeline did not have any pipeline warmers along it’s route which is a commonly used tactic to inhibit the formation of methane hydrates. The pipeline was also not electrically heated, and the hydration inhibitor chemicals that would have been another option are not manufactured in Russia, nor in China and would have been subject to sanctions.
With sanctions ending some of the maintenance cycles for the pipeline, and many mitigation processes for methane hydrates not being available to Russia, the entirety of the pipelines ability to not form methane hydrates would be wholly dependent on how thorough of a job Russia’s state owned Gazprom does in the initial dehydration process of the gas. If they slacked, or failed to do a thorough job, then water would have been in the pipelines and plausibly formed a methane hydrate plug in the NordStream 1 pipeline.
When a solid plug is formed, the pipeline has to be slowly depressurized from both sides equally. However, lets say instead that there was a hydrate plug present, which is why Russia had stopped operations. And the last functioning turbine on the Russian side of Nordstream 1 broke down, and could no longer maintain pressure on the Russian side. Well, at that point the plug would likely be subject to pressure from the German side and might dislodge. Such a plug would be traveling quite fast and at a turn or bend in the pipe, would travel straight through the pipe and cause an explosion. You’ll note that the leaks on the pipelines occurred at bends in the pipe.
But such a loss of pressure would trigger failsafe’s that close the pipeline valves on the Russian side so that reverse flow does not occur for very long at all. But lets say that before the valve can fully close, this hydrate started moving in the opposite direction anyways, with 100 atmospheres of pressure behind it. You close the valve and the hydrate is now running into a wall of flammable methane that it’s compressing as it slows down. Well, if you’re familiar with how a diesel engine works, this is how that cycle starts, and having a hydrate suddenly decelerate into a wall of flammable gas could cause a similar explosion as the hydrate turns into its own spark plug.
You’ll note that this explanation is solely for Nordstream 1, but it’s quite possible that the same conditions could have formed within Nordstream 2, which despite never officially delivering any gas to Germany was also similarly pressurized with methane gas as construction had completed at the end of 2021 but due to the conflict starting in March and sanctions; was unable to fully complete commissioning in a normal fashion. They had however managed to do so post sanctions, but as with NordStream 1, I am unsure of how much of the commissioning tasks they were able to complete correctly. It’s quite possible that they may have been taking this time to attempt similar maintenance to both pipelines and possibly disrupted methane hydrates that had formed as a result of their inability to properly dehydrate the natural gas due to sanctions.
I do not think the accident explanation has enough information behind it to explain the Nordstream 2 explosion, but it is a fairly rigorous explanation for the Nordstream 1 explosion. It’s possible more details may come out that lend towards the possibility of an accident in NordStream 2 at a later date.
4. Conclusion
You’ll note that I am still incredibly uncertain here and am presenting both cases. The world won’t really know unless and until we get live footage of the pipelines and can see whether the explosion blew the pipeline out, or if there is any evidence of an initial explosion from outside blowing into the pipeline first before the pressurized gas escaped and likely ruptured the pipeline further. This will be difficult to tell without some forensic investigation as well, so we can’t just go off of the initial photographs and video whenever they are able to get sub-sea drones down to the pipeline ruptures.
I have soo far been extremely disappointed with the scientific rhetoric surrounding the pipeline explosion. All of our experts are only talking about climate change, when I suspect that we all want a pipeline or gas expert to talk about whether or not this was an accident. Every interview I’ve read has been a disappointment. I want real expertise.
You’ll also note that the only thing we can be absolutely certain about is that someone is lying. The Russians say they can’t rule out western sabotage. NATO claims it is Russian sabotage. They are either both lying and trying to use an accident as a political tool. Or one of them is responsible for intentional sabotage and is lying about it.
I took time in this post to explore both sides as best as I could. You’ll note that the conspiratorial side does not have any proof of the explosions being intentional and only has established motives and coincidences. While the side supporting an accident does not have such a solid explanation for why this occurred in both pipelines within a short period of time and is kind of reaching to explain the NordStream 2 explosion.
![Asbestos removal Pepe [HD] [OC] : r/AsbestosRemovalMemes](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ZlVT!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbfea2470-bb8b-41e4-88d7-7b64aa89f4a8_1500x1672.png "Asbestos removal Pepe [HD] [OC] : r/AsbestosRemovalMemes")
Both sides have incomplete information and knowledge. If we go back to my fart metaphor for a little bit. You and I will never know who/what is responsible for this, and it’s almost a waste of time for us to really bother to find out. The only thing for certain is that we’re going to have to stand here and smell this for a while, and it’s certainly stinky.
Thanks for the scoop on this! I love the meme you used. Fucking geo-politics, man.