As the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipelines are currently incapable of transporting natural gas from Russia to Europe, experts ponder who is going to benefit from this catastrophe.
Vladimir Demidov, an international analyst of energy and natural resource markets, told Sputnik that the parties who oppose negotiations between Germany and Russia definitely benefit from the Nord Stream breakdown.
As these negotiations may lead to sanctions against Russia being partially lifted – potentially in exchange for gas shipments during winter – those who want to keep these sanctions in place could also be regarded as an interested party, he added.
“This is an act of aggression on a planetary level,” Demidov remarked. “A country or a bloc destroying infrastructure of another country. And we’re not talking about domestic infrastructure here, but infrastructure that connects countries and supplies about 30 percent of the natural gas Europe uses.”
Russian National Energy Security Fund analyst Igor Yushkov also observed that neither Russia nor Germany were interested in the pipeline’s destruction: for Berlin, Nord Stream presented an option to stave off a potential “energy collapse” during winter, while Moscow invested a lot of money into the project.
Both Demidov and Yushkov observed that Europe will now have to purchase natural gas from the United States, the largest liquefied natural gas supplier while it looks like Russia was essentially squeezed out from the European natural gas market.
“The natural gas from the US is going to become more expensive and Europe would still have to buy it because there is no other gas,” Demidov said. “A very amusing diversification has occurred in Europe: they switched from key supplier of the ‘bad’ gas from Russia to the ‘freedom’ gas from the United States that costs at least twice as much.”
He also pointed at former Polish Foreign Minister Radoslav Sikorsky, who “thanked” the United States on social media for the Nord Stream breakdown, with Demidov arguing that when people of such caliber make such statements, it looks as if they are trying to make the truth look like a joke.
“I have a feeling that the United States really wants to destroy the European Union as a global economic player,” he said.
On Monday, operator Nord Stream AG reported a sharp pressure drop at one of the lines of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline and at two lines of the Nord Stream 1 natural gas pipeline.
A video of gas leaking from the Nord Stream pipeline in Danish waters near the island of Bornholm was eventually released by the Danish military.
While the cause of this incident is being investigated, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia is extremely concerned by this development and did not rule out the possibility of sabotage being the cause.