Sabotage cannot be ruled out as the cause of three leaks detected on two Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream gas pipelines, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Tuesday.
“We certainly cannot rule it out,” she said while on a visit to Poland to open the new Baltic Pipe linking Poland and Denmark with Norway’s offshore gas fields. “It is too early to conclude yet, but this is an extraordinary situation and there are three leaks, so it is hard to imagine that it could be a coincidence.”
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki had fewer doubts.
“We do not yet know the details of what happened, but we can clearly see that it is an act of sabotage,” he said at the joint appearance with Frederiksen, calling it “the next stage in the escalation of the situation we are facing in Ukraine.”
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$NATGAS daily chart
Note: this look is end of day from yesterday. The Natural Gas Chart (constant contract) updates just once a day on stockcharts.com. My theory is Natural Gas should get a bump in price with these three pipeline leaks under the North Sea.
$NATGAS daily chart
$NATGAS weekly chart
In case those two links don’t show as charts on this page, here is what I am looking at with two screenshots, one for the $NATGAS daily chart and one for the $NATGAS weekly chart:
$NATGAS daily chart
$NATGAS weekly chart
Sabotage was my first thought, but who would benefit?
Russia will at some time in the future want to sell gas to Europe again. I don’t see how they come out ahead from damaging the pipeline.
The European countries that buy the gas will not be in better shape due to the delay in gas shipments when they want to start purchasing it again.
I wonder if it was either a maintenance issue that was not addressed or an event that would have happened sometime whether or not the gas was flowing.
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Earlier, I said I couldn’t see how Russia would benefit by sabotaging the Nord Stream pipeline. I think it is more than 50% possible that they did after reading this Twitter thread.
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I enjoyed that thread from @Ich_Bryan and I believe he’s closer to the truth than other pundits I’ve read.
After reading this, yes, I firmly believe Russia is behind this.
That’s a very good find, PF. Now I need to go back and read some of the longer links contained in that thread.
