Someone has punctured the two Nord Stream pipelines, but for now no one knows for sure who. According to the Kremlin, it appears that there is “a terrorist act” and therefore the Russians are demanding an “objective investigation”. It is unclear who should carry this out, because the number of objective bodies has now been reduced to zero. In the West there seems to be little doubt about the perpetrator: Russia has sabotaged its own pipelines.
In the absence of concrete indications about who is responsible, the media have already switched to problem 2 in recent days, the safety of the extensive infrastructure on the seabed: data and power cables. The windmills in the North Sea will soon be standing in the wind, because a miscreant has cut the cables to land. I don’t know what the consequences are of cutting the data cables, the internet will probably go down.
I heard Russian naval ships have already been spotted near our wind farms. What were they supposed to do there? Did they have scissors on board?
No gas, no electricity and no more data: we are in danger of being catapulted back to the fifties, to coal burning, candles and dataless typewriters: an energy transition, but a very different one than Urgenda had in mind.
Dutch generals bd now have a day job analyzing and commenting on developments in Ukraine and everything related to them, such as the leaking pipelines. Wednesday I heard commander bd Mart de Kruif on the VRT radio. He pointed to Russia as the most likely culprit, although he admitted he wasn’t sure either.
He had three arguments: they can do it, that’s how the Russians are waging war these days and they had a ‘business case’: the sabotage costs the Russians billions, but it also brings them billions due to the increasing gas prices – even if they can use the gas. no longer sell to Europe.
You can also blame the US with such arguments, but that is a friendly nation.
It’s driving us crazy that we don’t know. Somewhere a couple of men are sitting contentedly around a table after enjoying their successful operation. But where? What language do they speak? They said nashe zdoróvje or cheersafter they uncorked the champagne bottles?
Someday it will come out, someday someone will take credit or a waiter who happens to be present will blow out of the school. One day a secret service will make an incriminating telephone call public or a naval captain in need of money will sell his knowledge.
My hopes are pinned on the guys from Bellingcat, who have proven themselves more than once to be smarter than all the secret agents put together, and who surfaced a cutscene of a sailor with his thumbs up on the railing saying something that ‘kaputt‘ seems. ah! Got caught in blatant!
But for now, we’re groping in the dark.
If I were the writer of the screenplay of explosion, I would choose a surprising plot. Not the Russians, not the Americans, too cheap. Maybe something with an explosive brought into the pipe from the inside by an insane engineer or an enraged Danish herring fisherman who kept snagging and bought a few depth charges. If necessary, something with the lid on Norwegians and a devilish plan to make even more profit with their gas exports. That you as a viewer are amazed and say: ‘I didn’t expect that.’
But the reality is simply plotless, so it must be something with the Iranians or the Mossad again.