subsea infrastructure vulnerability

[Oldgreybeard]

It wouldn't surprise me at all if there weren't quite a few fat envelopes being handed out when Germany, Italy and The Netherlands made the decision to become so heavily reliant on gas from a single source. Big business tends to operate like that anyway, and the oil and gas industries are, perhaps, more adept at "smoothing the course of negotiations" then many other industries.

I had to go and look at a job in Nigeria many years ago, inside a military compound in the north of the country. The British Embassy recommended a "facilitator" to look after the two of us and smooth the way. This "facilitator" normally worked for the oil industry there. He met us at the airport, with kalashinkov casually slung over his shoulder, and his first good deed was his colleague running down the road and bashing up the thief that had taken one of our bags, right outside the terminal.

Throughout our time there, everywhere we went (except the hotel and the embassy) our path was smoothed with brown paper wrapped "bricks". I assume these were bundles of US dollars. We couldn't even get into the military base where were were supposed to be working without a senior officer being paid off. Most terrifying place I've ever been, and I have absolutely no desire to return there. Pity, as the people we met away from officialdom were great.

[Joeboy]

It wouldn't surprise me at all if there weren't quite a few fat envelopes being handed out when Germany, Italy and The Netherlands made the decision to become so heavily reliant on gas from a single source. Big business tends to operate like that anyway, and the oil and gas industries are, perhaps, more adept at "smoothing the course of negotiations" then many other industries.

I had to go and look at a job in Nigeria many years ago, inside a military compound in the north of the country. The British Embassy recommended a "facilitator" to look after the two of us and smooth the way. This "facilitator" normally worked for the oil industry there. He met us at the airport, with kalashinkov casually slung over his shoulder, and his first good deed was his colleague running down the road and bashing up the thief that had taken one of our bags, right outside the terminal.

Throughout our time there, everywhere we went (except the hotel and the embassy) our path was smoothed with brown paper wrapped "bricks". I assume these were bundles of US dollars. We couldn't even get into the military base where were were supposed to be working without a senior officer being paid off. Most terrifying place I've ever been, and I have absolutely no desire to return there. Pity, as the people we met away from officialdom were great.

Nigeria is an absolute trip, worked there for years, loved it. A proper, frontier, oilfield country.
A shame about the corruption, violence & pollution though. It was always an adrenaline blast to be there. I was fortunate to work all up and down the West Coast of Africa in my 30's. Nigeria was the stand out.

[Oldgreybeard]

Nigeria is an absolute trip, worked there for years, loved it. A proper, frontier, oilfield country.
A shame about the corruption, violence & pollution though. It was always an adrenaline blast to be there. I was fortunate to work all up and down the West Coast of Africa in my 30's. Nigeria was the stand out.

Absolutely terrified me, from the moment we arrived to the moment we flew out. Got off to a bad start with the bag thief outside the terminal, got far, far worse as we headed north to the army camp. Getting stopped by heavily armed gangs demanding money was routine. We were only there to roughly survey an army workshop site, even the commander of that camp demanded his "brick" from our "facilitator", before letting us in, and we were supposedly working for his government.

They wanted to build a replica of the UK army base repair workshops, used to maintain, repair and refurbish armoured vehicles. They still had lots of old British armoured vehicles and were trying to keep them going in the most rudimentary conditions. There was zero regard for safety at all, watching some of the mechanics working within the army compound was enough to have me walking around with one hand over my eyes so I didn't see the inevitable accident.

Biggest threat we were told we faced was being kidnapped. Everywhere we went, day or night, we had to be accompanied by one of our armed "facilitators". If anything I think that made us more at risk. Flying out of Abuja sticks in my mind as the greatest relief I've ever felt when getting away from anywhere.

[Oldgreybeard]

Question for @Joeboy, with his connections to the oil and gas industry. Just been in touch with a former colleague in Sweden and he has said that the Swedish authorities (presumably their military) now have evidence that the four instances of pipeline damage (two breaks in Nordstream 1, two in Nordstream 2) look to have been caused by internal pipeline explosions.

He has written that the specialist media there are talking about the use of modified "self-propelled inspection pigs". A quick web search seems to show these things as being normally used for internal pipeline surveys, using cameras and sensors to check the health of the pipeline. Apparently these things know where they are down the pipe, as they measure the distance travelled, so can be put in at the end, run for a set distance inside the pipe, and, it seems in this case, triggered to detonate an attached explosive charge.

Of all the stories doing the rounds this seems to have a fairly plausible ring to it, as it would explain why there had been no surface or submarine contacts anywhere near the four explosion sites.

There is a further twist to this, that rather points towards Germany. It is quite possible that these "self-propelled inspection pigs" may have been put into the pipelines at the German end, and then driven along inside the pipes to the detonation points. The motive for this seemed unclear earlier, but there has been clarification of an intention by Russia to stop sending gas to Poland, Romania, Czech Republic and Slovakia through the Ukrainian pipelines and instead force them to take gas via Nordstream 1 and 2, through Germany. By blowing up both the Nordstream pipelines Russia will be forced to continue to send its gas through Ukraine this winter. That could well make a significant difference for Ukraine, and may be a motive for someone other than Russia taking our the Baltic pipelines.

Nowhere near being proof, and frankly I have grave doubts that Germany would have the cojones to do something so radical, but interesting, none the less.

[AE-NMidlands]

I wondered how long it would be before someone pointed out the waste/disgraceful release of metane going on.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... imate-risk has

Scientists fear methane erupting from the burst Nord Stream pipelines into the Baltic Sea could be one of the worst natural gas leaks ever and pose significant climate risks.

Neither of the two breached Nord Stream pipelines, which run between Russia and Germany, was operational, but both contained natural gas. This mostly consists of methane – a greenhouse gas that is the biggest cause of climate heating after carbon dioxide.
The extent of the leaks is still unclear but rough estimates by scientists, based on the volume of gas reportedly in one of the pipelines, vary between 100,000 and 350,000 tonnes of methane.

Jasmin Cooper, a research associate at Imperial College London’s department of chemical engineering, said a “lot of uncertainty” surrounded the leak.

“We know there are three explosions but we don’t know if there are three holes in the sides of the pipe or how big the breaks are,” said Cooper. “It’s difficult to know how much is reaching the surface. But it is potentially hundreds of thousands of tonnes of methane: quite a big volume being pumped into the atmosphere.”
Nord Stream 2, which was intended to increase the flow of gas from Russia to Germany, reportedly contained 300m cubic metres of gas when Berlin halted the certification process shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine.

That volume alone would translate to 200,000 tonnes of methane, Cooper said. If it all escaped, it would exceed the 100,000 tonnes of methane vented by the Aliso Canyon blowout, the biggest gas leak in US history, which happened in California in 2015. Aliso had the warming equivalent of half a million cars.

“It has the potential to be one of the biggest gas leaks,” said Cooper. “The climate risks from the methane leak are quite large. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, 30 times stronger than CO2 over 100 years and more than 80 times stronger over 20 years.”

I wonder whether it really does compete with leakage in the USA: https://news.stanford.edu/2022/03/24/me ... available/ has

the researchers studied the Permian Basin in New Mexico, one of the most expansive and highest-producing oil and gas regions in the world. They estimate that more than 9 percent of all methane produced in the region is being leaked into the skies, several-fold higher than Environmental Protection Agency estimates and well above those in the published literature. The EPA puts leaks at 1.4 percent of production on a national basis.

[Fintray]

I could see that intelligent "pigs" could certainly be used a lot of pipeline pigging is done by simple foam pigs that are push through the pipes by pressure and are caught in a pig catcher at the other end. The intelligent pigs can, as you say determine exactly where they are and measure conditions of the pipe e.g., corrosion levels, so to attach an explosive charge to one wouldn't be too difficult.

[Joeboy]

Question for @Joeboy, with his connections to the oil and gas industry. Just been in touch with a former colleague in Sweden and he has said that the Swedish authorities (presumably their military) now have evidence that the four instances of pipeline damage (two breaks in Nordstream 1, two in Nordstream 2) look to have been caused by internal pipeline explosions.

He has written that the specialist media there are talking about the use of modified "self-propelled inspection pigs". A quick web search seems to show these things as being normally used for internal pipeline surveys, using cameras and sensors to check the health of the pipeline. Apparently these things know where they are down the pipe, as they measure the distance travelled, so can be put in at the end, run for a set distance inside the pipe, and, it seems in this case, triggered to detonate an attached explosive charge.

Of all the stories doing the rounds this seems to have a fairly plausible ring to it, as it would explain why there had been no surface or submarine contacts anywhere near the four explosion sites.

There is a further twist to this, that rather points towards Germany. It is quite possible that these "self-propelled inspection pigs" may have been put into the pipelines at the German end, and then driven along inside the pipes to the detonation points. The motive for this seemed unclear earlier, but there has been clarification of an intention by Russia to stop sending gas to Poland, Romania, Czech Republic and Slovakia through the Ukrainian pipelines and instead force them to take gas via Nordstream 1 and 2, through Germany. By blowing up both the Nordstream pipelines Russia will be forced to continue to send its gas through Ukraine this winter. That could well make a significant difference for Ukraine, and may be a motive for someone other than Russia taking our the Baltic pipelines.

Nowhere near being proof, and frankly I have grave doubts that Germany would have the cojones to do something so radical, but interesting, none the less.

I mentioned internal yesterday and thought about. The issue is pressurised access. There will be enough sensors at both ends that the pipe should appear balanced at all times. Can't just hoy the end cap off. Not to say an equalising chamber couldn't be added on a Y splice...
If I was doing it, I'd use a self propelled internal drone that would not create a wavefront. The act of pigging the line would be seen on instruments. That's a hard one to hide.

Let's say that when we left the pipeline we had blown through pigs to shore. Did they fully remove the pig catchers? Who can say? That would be yer Y insertion right there.

Can't actually remember the ID of that pipeline, maybe 24"

[Fintray]

I wondered how long it would be before someone pointed out the waste/disgraceful release of metane going on.

“It has the potential to be one of the biggest gas leaks,” said Cooper. “The climate risks from the methane leak are quite large. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, 30 times stronger than CO2 over 100 years and more than 80 times stronger over 20 years.”

Wouldn't it be better to set alight the leaking gas?

[Joeboy]

I wondered how long it would be before someone pointed out the waste/disgraceful release of metane going on.

“It has the potential to be one of the biggest gas leaks,” said Cooper. “The climate risks from the methane leak are quite large. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, 30 times stronger than CO2 over 100 years and more than 80 times stronger over 20 years.”

Wouldn't it be better to set alight the leaking gas?

Flaretastic via shotgun! , get my coat....

[AE-NMidlands]

I wondered how long it would be before someone pointed out the waste/disgraceful release of metane going on.

“It has the potential to be one of the biggest gas leaks,” said Cooper. “The climate risks from the methane leak are quite large. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, 30 times stronger than CO2 over 100 years and more than 80 times stronger over 20 years.”

Wouldn't it be better to set alight the leaking gas?

Definitely. Hadn't thought of that... Want to throw the igniter?
I believe it's usually better to let leaking fuel gases burn out than extinguish them!
I suppose tracer bullets fired from a safe distance might do the job...