Nord Stream probe drags on

Truth is no closer a year on from Baltic Sea blasts stopping Russian gas supply to European countries

STOCKHOLM — On Sept 26, 2022, the Nord Stream pipelines transporting natural gas from Russia to European markets were ruptured in a series of explosions underneath the Baltic Sea near Sweden and Denmark.

One year after the attack, investigations by Sweden, Denmark, and Germany, which excluded Russia, are still dragging on, yielding no substantive results.

Running from Vyborg in Russia to Lubmin in Germany under the Baltic Sea, the Nord Stream twin pipelines were critical to Europe’s energy security.

In 2021, the European Union imported 83 percent of natural gas consumed, with nearly 50 percent of imports coming from Russia (153 billion cubic meters), according to the European Council.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has protested that the three countries deliberately delayed the investigation and tried to conceal who was the black hander.

In a joint letter dated February this year, the three countries told the United Nations Security Council that “investigations have not yet been concluded. At this point, it is not possible to say when they will be concluded.” There has been no major breakthrough since then.

China’s envoy to the United Nations called on Sept 26 for an objective, fair and professional investigation into the Nord Stream gas pipeline explosions that occurred a year ago.

Since the incident, many members of the UN Security Council, including China, have repeatedly called for an investigation to ascertain the truth as quickly as possible, Geng Shuang, China’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, said while speaking at a Security Council briefing on the issue.

“China hopes to find the truth about the incident as soon as possible and bring the perpetrators to justice. We hope that the Secretariat will provide more useful information, and that the Security Council will continue to pay attention to this matter,” Geng said.

Mats Ljungqvist, the Swedish prosecutor investigating the attack, said in April that a state actor “directly or at least indirectly behind all this” was the “absolute main scenario,” without naming any country.

Caution from the European states is probably a result of the politically sensitive and inconvenient truth.

Western officials would rather not know who bombed the Nord Stream pipelines, lest they discover that their allies were responsible, the Washington Post reported in April.

“Leaders see little benefit from digging too deeply and finding an uncomfortable answer,” the paper added, stating that officials “would rather not have to deal with the possibility that Ukraine or its allies were involved.”

A 5,000-word investigative report in February, “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline,” published by the Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh, appears all the more credible and logical among the many revelations.

Hersh revealed that the sabotage of the pipelines was a secret operation ordered by the White House, implemented by the CIA, and assisted by the Norwegian Navy. Such a scenario appears in accordance with US President Joe Biden’s statements in February last year that there would be no Nord Stream 2 if Russia attacked Ukraine — “I promise you we will be able to do it.”

Josep Puigsech, a Spanish expert on Russian affairs and contemporary history, has pointed to “a clear profit to be made” by the United States and a strengthening of its geopolitical influence over Germany.

“I’m increasingly convinced this was an action by the United States,” said Puigsech, adding that the country has the most to gain from the destruction of the pipelines: forcing Russia’s energy out of Europe while increasing Germany’s dependence on it.

The implications of the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines are enormous, said Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder and chairperson of the German think tank Schiller Institute.

She noted that the incident massively increased the immediate prospect of Europe’s deindustrialization and its dependence on US liquified natural gas.

In 2022, the US boosted liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports to Europe by 141 percent compared to 2021, surpassing Russia for the first time. In the first half of this year, the EU remains the primary buyer of US LNG, which devours more than half of the EU LNG import market.