Ships may lose buoyancy if they sail into the area, and there may also be a risk of ignition above the water and in the air, the Danish authorities said. The Danish Maritime Authority issued a navigation warning and established a prohibited area to ensure that ships do not go near the leaks. We are extremely worried by this news," he said in a conference call with reporters.Īsked if the trouble might have been caused by sabotage, Peskov said that "no version could be excluded." "This is an unprecedented situation that requires an urgent investigation. "The destruction that occurred on the same day simultaneously on three strings of the offshore gas pipelines of the Nord Stream system is unprecedented," the Nord Stream consortium said. Nord Stream AG said it was impossible to estimate when the gas network system's working capability would be restored. "There is no question that the largest environmental impact of this is to the climate, because methane is a really potent greenhouse gas," he said.ĭuration 6:27 CBC News Network's Aarti Pole speaks to Jonathan Arnold, acting director of clean growth with the Canadian Climate Institute.Īccording to the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change earlier this year, methane is 82.5 times worse for the climate than carbon dioxide over a 20-year time frame, because it so effectively absorbs the heat of the sun. David Hastings, a retired chemical oceanographer in Gainesville, Fla., says much of the gas would rise through the ocean and enter the atmosphere. Methane is the second biggest contributor to climate change after carbon dioxide. The deeper the gas is released in the sea, the higher the proportion that dissolves in the water. The escaped natural gas is almost entirely methane, which partially dissolves in water and is not toxic. Sections of the pipelines lie at a depth of around 80-110 metres. The pipelines have a constant internal diameter of 1.153 metres, according to Nord Stream. The leaks, off the coast of Denmark and Sweden, raised the stakes on whether energy infrastructure in European waters was being targeted and led to a small bump in natural gas prices.Įach line of the pipeline consists of about 100,000 24-tonne concrete-weight coated steel pipes laid on the seabed of the Baltic Sea. "The era of Russian domination in the gas sphere is coming to an end," Morawiecki declared, calling it "an era that was marked by blackmail, threats and extortion."ĭuration 1:04 Johannes Peters, head of the Center for Maritime Strategy and Security at the Institute for Security Policy at Kiel University, says there's only one Baltic country where 'the possibility, the capabilities and the motivation' for the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines come together - and that's Russia. Morawiecki characterized the events as "an act of sabotage." Polish PM slams Russiaįrederiksen was with Poland's President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, opening a valve of a yellow pipe belonging to the Baltic Pipe, a new system set to bring Norway's gas across Denmark and the Baltic Sea to Poland beginning next week. However, gas still fills the lines, leaving open the possibility of localized environmental damage. The pipelines are not currently bringing gas to Europe as an energy standoff over Russia's war in Ukraine halted flows or never allowed them to begin. Frederiksen said the Nord Stream leaks were suspicious. "There's no doubt, this is not an earthquake," Lund said.Īsked whether that constituted an attack on Denmark, Frederiksen replied that the leaks happened in international waters and "the answer is thus no."Īsked who could be responsible for the leaks, Frederiksen said "there is no information indicating who could be behind it."ĭanish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki tour a compressor station of the new Baltic Pipe on Tuesday near Goleniow, Poland. Seismic stations in Denmark, Norway and Finland also registered the explosions. A second, stronger blast northeast of the island that night was equivalent to a magnitude-2.3 earthquake. The first explosion was recorded early Monday southeast of the Danish island of Bornholm, said Bjorn Lund, director of the Swedish National Seismic Network. Explosions rattled the Baltic Sea before unusual leaks were discovered on two natural gas pipelines running underwater from Russia to Germany, seismologists said Tuesday.ĭanish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said her government regarded the leaks as the results of "deliberate actions" by unknown perpetrators, while other European leaders and experts pointed to possible sabotage amid an energy standoff with Russia provoked by its war in Ukraine.
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