Nord Stream follow-up: The location made it easier to repair

In this video, I address some feedback I received about my Nord Stream video regarding the location that the saboteurs chose for the attack.

I've kept this video outside the paywall because I think it's relevant for everyone who has watched the original YouTube video.

Best,
Anders

Transcript:

Hi. I recently released a video about Nord Stream and the story of how it was destroyed by a group of Ukrainian scuba divers.

In that video, I raise a lot of questions that create some doubt about the story. It was meant to complicate things and make clear that we should not take for granted that this story now explains the truth, because I think there are many weaknesses in it and we need answers to some of these questions. There are just so many things that are weird.

One of the questions I raised is about the location. Why did the divers choose exactly the location that they did, where the water is very deep? It's very complicated to dive there. It's very dangerous. It's a very hard diving operation, and the risk of failure is pretty big because it's so difficult to do. They did have an alternative. They could have done it not that far further east, and then it would have been a much easier dive — only half the water depth, much less complicated, with a much greater guarantee of success.

I say there that this is a weird choice, because the only reason it really makes sense is if they wanted to get the attention that they did. Choosing this location brought it much closer to Denmark in particular — just outside the 12 nautical mile territorial water border — but some of it also happened in the Swedish economic zone, and that meant more governments would be involved. So that seems like the reason.

I received some feedback that I want to address in this short video, and that is that there is another reason they could have chosen this location — and it's actually the explanation given in the new book that's out about the Nord Stream sabotage and the story of the Ukrainian group doing it. The reason they picked this very deep location, the book says, is that they wanted to make it as difficult as possible to repair the damage. They did it to maximize the effect and to make sure it would be very difficult to repair Nord Stream.

There is another location along the pipeline where it's actually deeper — around 100 to 110 meters. But that's so deep you can't actually dive there. It's so complicated it would not be possible for them to do it. But this location, where it's 80 meters, is physically possible. So they chose the deepest possible location where they could still do the dive, in order to maximize the damage and make sure it wouldn't be repaired easily.

I don't really think this explanation makes sense, and that's what I want to explain here. So the thing is, if you look at what actually happens when you blow a hole in a pipeline — I might put some graphics on the screen to try to explain some of these things — of course, water will come into the pipeline. But conceptually, I think the way to understand it is more that the gas is escaping, because the pressure inside the pipeline is much bigger than the pressure outside in the water.

At 80 meters, that's a pretty high water pressure, but the pressure inside the pipeline from the gas is much bigger. So the gas flows out of the pipeline, and of course it rises to the surface. That's what was discovered. Gradually the pressure in the pipeline goes down, and then water starts coming in. But because water can't really run uphill, at some point it equalizes. The pressure from the water and the pressure from the remaining gas become the same, and that's where the surface of the water inside the pipeline stabilizes. That section of the pipeline is then flooded.

But what happens if the rupture is in a local high point on the pipeline instead of in the low point? The divers chose a location in a low point. But if we take the rupture and say it is in the high point instead, then of course the gas will still run out — but you also have the question of gravity. When we get to the point where the pressure in the gas and the water is the same, gravity starts playing in, and the water will fall to the bottom while the gas rises to the surface. That means the water will spread out a lot more in the pipeline if the rupture is at a local high point — which would have been the case if they had chosen the easier location, about 100 kilometers further east.

So the easier location would have given a greater guarantee of actually being successful in destroying the pipelines and creating the ruptures, but it would also have flooded a much greater part of the pipeline. That would have meant that, if it wasn't immediately cleaned up, a much greater part of the pipeline would later need to be replaced, because it's the corrosion from the water that really is dangerous to the pipeline. So the more that is flooded, the more is potentially destroyed, and the more will need to be replaced if you want to repair the pipeline later on.

So I think we can actually add to my list of things to say about the location these divers chose. They chose a location where it was an extremely difficult, dangerous, complicated dive with a lower chance of success. It was also a location with high publicity, because it was close to the territorial waters of Denmark, and it involved both Denmark and Sweden.

But on top of that, it seems they chose a location where the damage would actually be fairly localized. A fairly small section of Nord Stream would be damaged badly enough that it would need to be replaced if at some point you want to repair Nord Stream and start transporting gas from Russia to Germany again.

So this group of Ukrainians say they chose this location to make it difficult to repair, but in reality, choosing this location probably made it easier to repair Nord Stream. So I don't really think that objection, or that explanation they give in the book, actually makes sense.

All right. I hope that made sense. See you next time.