The blown-up gas pipelines may yet have a new life
The investigation into the explosions at Nord Stream is our highest priority, German government spokesman Wolfgang Buchner said recently. Thus, a new turn has been outlined in the history of the two gas pipelines with a tragic fate, at the moment – of a criminal-legal nature. But will what is happening not ultimately become an impetus for a political decision – to repair and put into operation both raw material pipelines, in the construction of which many billions of dollars have been invested? And not only Russian ones, but also European ones…
Let us recall that, as the German publications SZ, Die Zeit and ARD recently found out, the Federal Prosecutor's Office of Germany suspects three Ukrainian citizens — employees of the Kiev diving school Scuba Family — of involvement in the sabotage; an arrest warrant was issued for one of them. According to the investigation, at some point the divers made a deep-sea dive and attached explosive devices to the pipelines. Allegedly, the highest political officials of Ukraine are behind this terrorist attack.
For many observers, the very fact that the story of the Nord Stream explosions, seemingly forever «buried» by the West, suddenly received a criminal-legal continuation, has given rise to suspicion: is there a desire to restore the damaged gas pipelines and return their economic significance behind this?
In March of this year, the project operator Nord Stream AG determined that repairing Nord Stream 1, which was destroyed in September 2022, would cost €1.2-1.35 billion. The company prepared this conclusion solely as part of a lawsuit with Western insurers Lloyd's of London and Arch Insurance, which refuse to make payments to cover the damage. And not at all with the aim of demonstrating a desire to revive the project. We are talking about the potential costs of removing seawater from the pipes, stabilizing and repairing them, as well as replacing the lost gas. In general, the topic of a possible restoration of both gas pipelines running along the bottom of the Baltic Sea has been discussed since the fall of 2022, but mostly sluggishly.
— Both lines of Nord Stream 1 and one line of Nord Stream 2 were blown up, — Igor Yushkov, an expert at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, recalls in a conversation with MK. — That is, one line of Nord Stream 2 survived. The problem is that immediately after the start of the NWO, the authorities in Berlin suspended the certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline: the German Ministry of Economy withdrew the project report (which contained an assessment of the security of energy supply) from the Federal Network Agency for its revision. From a formal point of view, the Germans may well prepare a full package of documents that will allow the certification of Nord Stream 2 and the commissioning of its undamaged line with a design capacity of 27-27.5 billion cubic meters. In fact, this will double Gazprom's current supplies to the European Union, which go only through Turkish Stream and in transit through Ukraine.
— Indeed, we cannot do without political will on the part of Germany and the European Union as a whole. From a purely technical point of view, Nord Stream 1 can also be restored: I don’t think that salt water caused any critical damage to the “inside” of the pipe. First of all, we are talking about replacing the blown-up sections: they will need to be sawed off, disconnected, raised from the bottom, new sections installed in their place, ultimately creating a single thread. Ideally, this should be a joint program, but theoretically Russia itself can do this; we completed Nord Stream 2 without the participation of Europeans, using only the pipe-laying barge Fortuna. But I repeat: a political decision is needed. Let’s say we repair both gas pipelines, spend tens of billions of dollars on this, and Europe refuses to take our gas.
The situation with Nord Stream 1 is further complicated by the issue of the compressor station. After all, the pipeline had stopped functioning even before it was blown up. Gas pumping stopped because the German company Siemens failed to fulfill its contractual obligations to repair the turbines that were supposed to be sent to Canada. They were afraid that they would fall under Western sanctions: in particular, there was a ban on the supply of energy equipment to Russia. Accordingly, even if the linear part of Nord Stream 1 is restored, the gas pipeline will not work without repairing and starting up the turbines. Nord Stream 2 does not have this problem, but it does have another one: the project is not certified.
— Formally, no one has broken them: companies in EU countries are ready to take Russian gas and work within the framework of previous agreements. Rather, there is some process of investigation and discussion in the business community: who is to blame for the fact that the gas has not arrived, who violated the contract, should Nord Stream be restored? But the fact is that over the past two years, due to high prices, overall gas consumption in Europe has fallen by more than 100 billion cubic meters per year. Many are unable to pay for gas today as much as they did before.
— There is no particular sense in this — at least because of the problem with the turbines. If only to lay from Nord Stream 2: at least there will be pressure in the pipe. Plus, the Kaliningrad region is now supplied via transit through Lithuania, which is a cause for concern. But at one time, in order to secure the Kaliningrad region with energy, another project was implemented — with the participation of the floating receiving terminal «Marshal Vasilevsky». It was built in South Korea, delivered to the Kaliningrad region, where it was used by Gazprom as a reserve source for the delivery of port LNG from the Leningrad region. Since the Kaliningrad region consumes very little gas — only a few billion cubic meters per year, the region does not need any branch from the main pipeline. Do not forget that both «Nord Streams» are powerful export gas pipelines, each line of which is designed to pump 27 billion cubic meters.