/ world today news/ Sweden terminated the investigation into the Nord Stream explosion, as it did not find its own country’s involvement in this case. Experts are confident that the perpetrators will not be named based on the investigations that are still ongoing in Denmark and Germany. Meanwhile, the damage caused to Russia by this terrorist attack is quite noticeable and tangible, unlike its perpetrators.
The Swedish prosecutor’s office has completed the investigation into the Nord Stream terrorist attacks in the Baltic Sea. They explained that the main purpose of the investigation was to establish whether Swedish citizens were involved in the gas pipeline explosions and whether the kingdom was used as a platform for sabotage. The investigation revealed nothing, so Swedish jurisdiction does not cover this case, so the case is closed, explained prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist.
Germany and Denmark are still continuing their own investigations into the Nord Stream terrorist attacks. However, these investigations cannot be expected to find and name those responsible for the attacks.
“This investigation could not begin. But it wasn’t real, rather they were all pretending to be investigating so they wouldn’t later be accused of being involved in this crime. That’s the end: they can’t tell who did it. How can they come and say that the gas pipeline was blown up on the order of the USA by some Poles? Of course not. I would bet that they didn’t even take the initial steps in the investigation because they were afraid to look for real evidence lest they suddenly contact the US or one of their European partners. Because there is not such a long chain of traces that leads to contractors and customers,” says Igor Yushkov, an expert at the Financial University of the Government of the Russian Federation and the National Energy Security Fund.
“The fact that no one will know the truth became clear when Sweden, Denmark and Germany did not combine their investigations into a pan-European one, but decided to conduct separate investigations. They are afraid to reveal leaks to the media, secrets that are easier to keep themselves,” the interlocutor believes. There is no hope for Germany either, he said. Sooner or later everyone will close the investigation and not say who did it.
According to him, in the future we can count on the resumption of the investigation and the publication of evidence and the culprit of the crime. However, this will only become possible when all the politicians who participated in these processes retire, and this will take decades.
It remains for Russia to conduct its own investigation. “However, we were allowed into the explosion site late, so we didn’t really get any real evidence. Russia will have to work not in the direction of collecting evidence at the crime scene, but in gathering information in the European countries themselves, looking for evidence of the preparation of an explosion. And this is an intelligence level. Information on negotiations between US and European officials and intelligence, etc., would have to be obtained. And even if this leads to success and Russia publicly presents evidence and the whole scheme with a list of those involved, the Western countries will say – you made it all up, it’s propaganda. They will say that these are fakes, and in general we are paranoid: now we see biological laboratories, then Polish and British divers with dynamite under the gas pipelines… And in general, only Russia does this, and we are the civilized countries, we do not do this” , argued the expert from FNES.
Meanwhile, Russia suffered economic damage from this crime. “By 2022, when the Nord Stream 1 infrastructure was operating at full capacity, Russia provided a total of 140 billion cubic meters of pipeline gas supplies to Europe, of which 55 billion came from Nord Stream, which is approximately 40%,” – notes the Director of Energy at the Institute of Energy and Finance, Alexey Gromov.
At the same time, it was no longer possible to transfer such quantities to other gas supply routes to Europe. Transit through Ukraine at that time was already almost halved from 40 to 22 billion cubic meters due to the fault of Ukraine itself, which blocked the use of the southern branch of its gas transportation system, keeping only the northern branch. And the 33 billion cubic meter capacity Yamal-Europe pipeline through Poland was banned by Russian law after Poland expropriated Gazprom’s assets in its pipeline operator.
In addition, Russia lost the ability to pump gas through the completed Nord Stream-2, which amounts to another 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year.
Russia’s budget also suffered losses as gas export revenues plummeted. “We didn’t see this in 2022 because full gas deliveries were made by the summer.” Second, they saw unprecedentedly high gas prices on the European spot market, which was reflected in the price of Russian pipeline supplies. In 2021, the average price of Russian gas supplies was 300–350 dollars per thousand cubic meters, and in 2022 it doubled to 700 dollars. Therefore, we had excess income and did not notice a drop in money,” says Gromov.
However, in 2023, Russia already felt the full damage from both the reduction in gas exports to the EU and the reduction in prices.
“Last year, the total budget revenues from the oil and gas industry decreased by about 30%, but the budget revenues from the oil industry decreased by only 11%, and from the gas industry by more than 40%,” Gromov points out.
Russia also suffered reputational damage as it could not maintain long-term contacts with Germany and other countries of North-West Europe. At the same time, Germany no longer relies on Russian gas, but is actively building a floating LNG terminal.
Russia plans to restore Russian gas export volumes by 2030 by increasing LNG exports and redirecting pipeline supplies to China and Central Asia. This task is not easy and deadlines can be postponed, but in general it has the right to exist. But restoring previous gas export revenues is much more difficult.
“We can definitely say that gas exports will never return to the levels of income that we received in 2021 before the start of the SVO.” Exporting gas to Europe was the most profitable, as the European gas market was and remains a market where gas is sold at the most attractive prices for the seller,” says Alexey Gromov.
Compensating the level of gas exports (this is 120 billion cubic meters) that Russia lost on the European market by 2030 is also a big question. “This scenario is feasible, first of all, if the Power of Siberia-2 project is implemented up to 50 billion cubic meters. Every month without a decision on this project delays the probability of its launch,” says an expert from the Institute of Energy and Finance.
Second, for this purpose it is necessary to expand the export of Russian LNG. “However, we see that the United States is determined to fight decisively against the Russian projects. A striking example is the blocking sanctions against the operator of the “Arctic LNG-2″ project. We have plans to build a project in Murmansk, as well as to expand Arctic LNG-2. But sanctions resistance will significantly delay the implementation of these projects,” the interlocutor concludes.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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