An article in a Russian media, written more than two years ago.
Automatic translation:
Russian underwater gas pipelines will be destroyed
31.03.2020
by Yuri Soshin
The beginning of 2020 showed a decline in European consumers' demand for U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG).
This clearly reflects an overall downward trend in global energy consumption as a consequence of macroeconomic crisis phenomena.
At the moment, Russian natural gas, including in the form of LNG, remains cheaper than that supplied from the United States and has a clear competitive advantage.
In order to maintain its already achieved position on the European gas market and to oust Russia from it, the USA is taking a whole range of measures, including those that do not quite comply with the norms of international law.
The USA currently controls the overland transit space for energy carriers through the service states under its control: Poland and Ukraine. At least one of the reasons for organizing the 2014 coup d'etat in Ukraine is that the U.S. gained control over part of the onshore energy pipeline lines running from Russia to Europe.
The construction of the Nord Stream 1, Nord Stream 2 and Turkish Stream submarine pipelines was designed to give Russia and Old Europe independence in natural gas supplies. One of the main motivating factors for the construction of these lines was the reliability and durability of supplies bypassing U.S. control zones.
Security, predictability and stability are among the key factors for European consumers when negotiating long-term energy supply contracts. Onshore pipelines coming from Russia, while under the de facto control of the United States, cannot match these qualities.
Supplies of Russian gas through the territory of the US satellites, actually deprived of state independence, may be destabilized at any time up to complete cessation.
This can happen both as a result of force majeure circumstances, and purposefully, in order to create a competitive advantage of the American liquefied gas supplied to Europe. The disruption and blockage of gas supplies can also be done for purely political purposes.
Lack of proper long-term predictability refers to the Turkish Stream pipeline, laid under the Black Sea and opened in January 2020, because at the exit point it passes through Greece and Bulgaria, the degree of servility of which in relation to the United States is extremely high.
The reliability of supplies via Turkish Stream is very problematic, since it depends on the possible destabilization - up to the destruction of the state as such - of the socio-political situation in Turkey.
The presence of gas pipelines beyond the control of the USA is the survival factor of both Russia and the European Union as an independent geopolitical force.
Taking control or defunctionalization of the submarine pipelines is a factor of growing dependence of Europe upon the US and turning the latter into a global - control over supplies from the Middle East is technically feasible for America - monopolist at the energy resources market.
U.S. hydrocarbon exports in recent decades are largely based on shale technology, effective only when gas and oil prices are relatively high. In recent years, very large funds have been invested in shale oil and gas production in the U.S., including small private investors.
Recently, due to the global epidemic of the coronovirus, the prices for hydrocarbons have dropped sharply. This has put into question not just the profitability of the already established shale industry, but its existence as such. For the U.S., this is a problem of maintaining economic and social stability.
The struggle for control of the European energy space was fought in a relatively civilized way until the end of 2019.
The introduction on December 21, 2019 of a package of sanctions against the "Nord Stream-2" under construction due to "incompatibility with the economic interests of the United States" showed that the legal and legislative norms in the world energy trade are no longer applicable, being replaced by open arbitrariness.
Sanctions restrictions and other relatively "civilized methods" can be replaced by more radical "geopolitical technologies". The U.S. can obtain a monopoly status in the European energy market through the physical destruction of underwater pipelines coming from Russia.
Terror as a means of implementing large-scale political and economic strategies is a reality today. Considering the crisis developments in the world and the general trends, such an "unthinkable" scenario may be considered almost inevitable.
There has already been a precedent of an underwater pipeline being destroyed, and U.S. intelligence agencies were openly involved in it.
In 1983, the administration of U.S. President Reagan sought to overthrow the pro-Soviet Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The CIA, on the initiative of Division Chief Duane Claridge, created a professional subversive group disguised as a separate formation of the "contras" movement - the anti-Sandinista armed resistance.
On October 14, 1983, combat swimmers from this group blew up an underwater pipeline in the port of Puerto Sandino. Subsequent investigations proved direct U.S. involvement in this and other (the October 11, 1983 surface attack involving the destruction of five oil storage tanks in the port of Corinto) terrorist acts, which was acknowledged by the United Nations.
Putting an underwater pipeline out of service for a long period of time is not difficult for a technologically advanced state. Accurate positioning of the pipeline's line of passage is fairly easy with complex analysis. Magnetometer and other underwater instrumentation can be further refined on site from ships.
Then an autonomous or teleoperated underwater vehicle is created that is capable of moving along the pipe and placing explosive devices on it at a certain interval. When mines are detonated synchronously, a section of the pipeline is perforated and fails.
Repairing or replacing damaged sections of the pipeline - especially if the attack is carried out simultaneously on sufficiently separated sections - will be extremely difficult due to the need to send special ships with the necessary equipment to the accident sites.
The duration of repair work in case of multiple, dispersed damages may be long beyond the possibility of curing the gas supply interruption by ground reserves.
In case of repeated attacks or gradual detonation of predetermined mines in different sections, the pipeline operation will stop for a long time or will stop completely.
Financial costs of eliminating the consequences of terrorist attacks may make pipeline gas supplies unprofitable in comparison with LNG.
Terrorist defunctionalization of submarine pipelines is also available to countries with moderate scientific and technical potential, such as Poland and Ukraine.
Underwater terror" is also possible from organizations and groups that are independent or relatively independent of any state, such as Ukrainian nationalist organizations, radical Islamists, etc. Terrorist impact in this case can be carried out by rather primitive methods.
The Baltic Sea is shallow and determining places of pipe laying presents no problems even with a minimal, relatively inexpensive and legally available set of equipment. The terrorist attack itself may be carried out by lowering an explosive charge on a cable.
Countering underwater terror, especially in the case of submersible drones, would be extremely difficult.
If at the coastal level it is still possible to organize somehow the surveillance and control of water areas in places where pipelines are laid, it is more difficult to do it as far from the shore.
As for the potential customers of anti-pipeline terror, everything cannot be reduced only to economic motivation or the desire of the U.S. for global leadership.
At present, there is a diversification of terror and its withdrawal from the control of organizations and movements affiliated with various state and quasi-state structures.
Terror may no longer have a direct orientation, the goals may be to discredit certain states, governments, administrations and political groups, or even directly the chaos and destruction of the world economic and legal system as such.
However, the following conclusions should be drawn as the main one:
1. terrorist impact on Russian submarine pipelines is almost inevitable. With a high degree of probability, the United States will be the main initiator.
2. Attacks on Russian submarine pipelines will result in a large-scale crisis of the European Union. The result of the latter, with a high degree of probability, will not be alarmist cohesion and state-society mobilization, but rather complex disorientation and disintegration.
3. The result will be the elimination of United Europe as an independent geopolitical actor, its transition under the comprehensive control of the U.S. and consolidation of the latter in the role of the world economic and political hegemon.
4. The Russian authorities need, at least at the level of analytical models, to work through the prospect of the emergence of "unthinkable" scenarios.
