subsea infrastructure vulnerability

[nowty]

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?

Its swings and roundabouts, as a greenhouse gas, methane is much worse than CO2 but it is short lived compared with CO2. Burning it is ultimately worse in a 100 years view but the methane is much worse in a 10 year view.
https://www.newsweek.com/methane-vs-co2 ... en-1644977

[Oldgreybeard]

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"

Thanks for the insight, given your background in the industry. Would you mind if I copied this back to my former colleague in Sweden? He's not in the oil or gas industry, but is a civil engineer with a strong interest in how, and why, engineering infrastructure fails.

[AE-NMidlands]

Do the pigs rely on going with the flow (as I believe water main-cleaning pigs do) or could they make their self-propelled way "upstream?"

[Oldgreybeard]

Do the pigs rely on going with the flow (as I believe water main-cleaning pigs do) or could they make their self-propelled way "upstream?"

The intelligent ones are self-propelled, with a distance measuring capability, so don't rely on being pushed through, The Nordstream pipelines are also pretty big, 48" diameter, apparently. They were used to trial a new type of intelligent self-propelled pig when put into service, apparently, although in that case the pig was put in at the Russian end.

[AE-NMidlands]

Do the pigs rely on going with the flow (as I believe water main-cleaning pigs do) or could they make their self-propelled way "upstream?"

The intelligent ones are self-propelled, with a distance measuring capability, so don't rely on being pushed through, The Nordstream pipelines are also pretty big, 48" diameter, apparently. They were used to trial a new type of intelligent self-propelled pig when put into service, apparently, although in that case the pig was put in at the Russian end.

At 48" diameter I suppose you can have a pretty massive traction battery to power it! Why do the London tube bother with third (and fourth) rails, I wonder? (Maybe if building it now, they wouldn't.)
A

[Joeboy]

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"

Thanks for the insight, given your background in the industry. Would you mind if I copied this back to my former colleague in Sweden? He's not in the oil or gas industry, but is a civil engineer with a strong interest in how, and why, engineering infrastructure fails.

Have at it, no worries.

[Joeboy]

Do the pigs rely on going with the flow (as I believe water main-cleaning pigs do) or could they make their self-propelled way "upstream?"

The intelligent ones are self-propelled, with a distance measuring capability, so don't rely on being pushed through, The Nordstream pipelines are also pretty big, 48" diameter, apparently. They were used to trial a new type of intelligent self-propelled pig when put into service, apparently, although in that case the pig was put in at the Russian end.

At 48" diameter I suppose you can have a pretty massive traction battery to power it! Why do the London tube bother with third (and fourth) rails, I wonder? (Maybe if building it now, they wouldn't.)
A

Depending on which end you run from you could easily run a external power sourced pipe tractor unit on a glanded nut with the intrinsically safe motor cable on a smooth outer sheath. I'm going to stop now as there are many ways to do this and its an open forum.

At 48" you could put in people.

[nowty]

Oxygen cylinder to create an explosive mixture ?, you might not even need any explosives.

[Oldgreybeard]

Just had an interesting update from Sweden. It seems that Finland, Sweden and NATO have been jointly patrolling the length of both pipelines for weeks. NATO has mostly been using JSTARs and Rivet Joint aircraft to monitor shipping activity off Kaliningrad and towards the Russian end of the Baltic. Finland and Sweden have been using their aircraft to monitor the areas around their coast. There have been no reports of any untoward surface shipping anywhere along the pipeline route.

That really only leaves an undersea attack, made without surface ship support (so military submarine sabotage) or the theory that explosive laden intelligent, self-propelled, pigs were used, as anything else would almost certainly have been detected. As an interesting twist, the Ukrainian government have announced that they have detected a pig travelling through one of their pipelines from Russia, with no indication as to why its there, as there wasn't any maintenance due. Could just be propaganda, though, Ukraine is pretty good at getting people onside, and this may be a way of taking the focus off another player in what seems to be a pipeline war.

We're really no closer to finding out how these pipelines were blown up, or by who, really, although the list of possible culprits is now very small. Be interesting if the combined Danish and Swedish investigation comes up with some evidence. Apparently Sweden has offered some specialist ship capability to Denmark, to aid their investigation in the area around Bornholm.

[nowty]

I would think forensics should be able to work out in a week or two whether it was an internal or external explosion which would narrow down the method of attack.