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Notes -
Did the US blow up the Nord Stream Pipeline?
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream
That was linked to me and it appeals to my sense of - conspiracy? warmongering? ... But I also don't really understand if it could be true.
What's the consensus here about the pipeline?
(I don't really even care if we discuss the article, it's long and I don't know who the person is - just interested in all kinds of thoughts)
While the pipeline was (is?) reachable by divers, I still favor a blockage/poor maintenance as the most likely theory, followed by sabotage from within NordStream's operation.
Thing is that the two pipelines blew something like 18 hours apart that strikes me as a long time for a group of divers and their support vessel to sit around waiting to be caught. If one were planning to destroy the pipes by planting bombs on the exterior, I would expect those bombs to be on a timer to allow the divers to already be long gone when shit goes down, and I would expect timers would be set to detonate simultaneously so as to minimize the risk of a bomb being discovered before it had gone off.
How could poor maintenance destroy two separate pipelines nearly simultaneously, while producing shockwaves that everyone agrees look like they come from high explosives? And why would they blow up right next to the Swedish and Danish undersea border, if not to complicate an investigation by blurring jurisdiction?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Nord_Stream_pipeline_sabotage#/media/File:Nord_Stream_gas_leaks_2022.svg
This has to be sabotage. And since it is sabotage, the most obvious conclusion is that it's anti-Russian sabotage. It's a Russian pipeline, something that Russia paid for, something that Russia hoped to use to lessen trans-Atlantic unity and bring Germany closer to them. It's absence means higher profits for American energy exports, higher reliance of Europe on America, stronger influence of Ukraine and Baltics on Russia-Europe energy exports and poorer Euro-Russian relations.
The US has the world's most powerful navy, a navy with a considerable presence in the Baltic. The US leads NATO and has enormous global influence. The investigation is being conducted by a NATO country and a NATO hopeful, excluding Russia, the aggrieved party. Surely the most likely conclusion is that it's a NATO operation, probably formulated and executed by the US! People have raised the idea of Russia playing 4D chess to demonstrate that they were committed to cutting ties with Europe, that it was a false-flag operation to worsen NATO unity...
But this is a pretty contrived argument. If the Norway-Poland gas pipeline that recently opened blew up, would they say it was clearly a NATO sabotage attack? No, the party that would gain in that scenario is obviously Russia and so Russia would be the primary suspect.
Pretty easily actually. Especially if the issue was "helped along" by somebody working for NordStream. The pipes were pressurized but product hadn't been flowing for months which means plenty of time for water to seep in and start forming methane hydrate. IE the liquid natural gas turns into a solid. You let that go on long enough and it becomes rather hard not blow to the pipe up entirely by accident. The Water hammer effect is bad enough when dealing with a fluid that is relatively inert, never mind one that's actually volatile.
That says "water hammer", not "natural gas hammer". It has nothing to do with "volatility" and everything to do with incompressibility which gasses lack. The increase in pressure caused by instantaneously stopping the average flow of the pipeline is well under one percent.
The term "natural gas" as it's used in this context is just another name for methane and is not indicative of phase state. Despite the name, the fluid that flows through a natural gas pipeline is a liquid not a gas, and as a liquid is incompressible (or more accurately comes pre-compressed) wich is why the formation of methane hydrate and other condensates on the interior walls of the pipeline are something that has to be actively monitored and guarded against.
Occams razor holds that the theory requiring the fewest assumptions/steps is the most likely. Accordingly, which of these scenarios sounds more plausible given what we know? Some whacky Tom Clancy-esque scheme involving hundreds of people across half a dozen countries was executed successfully and in complete secrecy outside Hersh's unnamed source? or Russian industrial safety standards being a bit shit?
No, any methane in a normal natural gas pipeline is not liquid and will never be a liquid. The critical temperature of methane is -82 C and actual liquid natural gas as made is much colder. It takes special built terminals and a ton of refrigeration and a ton of very expensive insulation. Any methane in a transmission pipeline is either gas or supercritical
Iran-Contra? Manhattan Project? US bombing Cambodia? I mean I generally agree with you that complicated conspiracies' are hard to keep secret. But at least you have to admit that maybe your perception is flawed as you have no idea what the success rate is by definition, as they remain a secret and you only hear about the ones that are revealed.
Supercritical in this case -- the series of engineering case studies of NS 1 linked by @sansampersamp above are frikkin fascinating:
Transportation of Natural Gas in Dense Phase – Nord Stream 1
Part 2: Nord Stream Pipelines – Multiple Parallel Paths to Success or Failure?
Nord Stream Long Distance Gas Pipeline – Part 3 Application of Basic and AGA equations for estimating maximum gas flow in a long‐distance pipeline
It's quite a thing actually -- they are (were) pumping the gas with no booster stations, compressing it to 3190 psi (using a mere half-million horsepower) and having it arrive in Germany still at 1500 psi, enough to distribute it a little ways from the pipeline terminus.
AIUI hydrates are less likely to form in dense phase natural gas, which is one of the advantages of this kind of pipeline -- is that right?
No, that would seem to be a disadvantage of a high pressure pipeline based on the methane hydrate phase diagram you linked, looking at the chart as pressure goes up so does methane hydrate formation.
Supercritical methane: above -82 C and 46 bar
NS1/2 Operating from your first link: 2 to 6 C and 220 to 106 bar
Methane hydrate from the phase diagram you linked elsewhere in the thread: NS1/2 is pretty much exclusively operating in the methane hydrate range, at 2 - 6 C it looks like you need to be under maybe 20 bar to be out of the methane hydrate zone.
So if NS 1 has been operating in the methane hydrate zone for 20+ years why has it not had any issues until now? Well if no water is in the gas stream then no methane hydrate can form. And going off of steam tables and partial pressures at the injection state of 220 bar and 6 C the water content is 43 ppm, which does not leave much water at all for methane hydrate formation. Even less if they stuck the gas stream through a final dehydration step.
Given the above I really question the methane hydrate theory, especially in NS2. I could see at least being possible over time in NS1 as a build up they ignored. But still very doubtful, you'd have to assume that the Russians and Germans both ignored it. For NS2 which hasn't ever been sending gas through, any methane hydrate would be forming out of at most 43 ppm of water that was originally in the pipe when pressurized. Which is a very small amount of methane hydrate.
Above is also assuming that the Russians were not adding any kind of methane hydrate inhibitor to their gas. Or doing any further dehydration after compressing and cooling. Either way the gas is very dry to begin with, so there is not much water to form into methane hydrate, so there won't be much methane hydrate.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Methane_Hydrate_phase_diagram.jpg
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/methane-d_1420.html
https://www.thermopedia.com/content/1150/
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