Smoke Buoy Retrieved Near Damaged NS Pipeline

Danish authorities recovered an object that investigations found to be an empty maritime smoke buoy adjacent to the leakage-hit Nord Stream pipeline, the Danish Energy Agency (DEA) said Wednesday.

“According to The Danish Defense, the salvage was carried out at a depth of 73 meter. A representative of the owner, Nord Stream 2 AG, was present during the salvage”, completed on Tuesday, the DEA said in a press release.

“Investigations indicate that the object is an empty maritime smoke buoy, which is used for visual marking. The object does not pose a safety risk”.

The damage on pipeline sections in Danish and Swedish waters prompted speculation of a plot by the U.S. government to avert Kremlin weaponization of gas supplies to Europe.

Nord Stream AG, which is 51 percent owned by Russia’s Gazprom, reported September 26 “a pressure drop on both strings of the gas pipeline” of Nord Stream 1. It said the following day the pressure drop resulted from a gas leak on both lines of the pipeline.

“The positions of two assumed damages have been identified and are located north-east from Bornholm in Swedish and Danish EEZ, respectively”, it said.

The pressure stabilized “as of October 3”. But “Nord Stream AG is unable to inspect the damaged sections of the gas pipeline due to the lack of earlier requested necessary permits”, the owner said in an update October 4.

Nord Stream AG said October 27 a ship chartered by Nord Stream AG arrived at the suspected site of the damage in Sweden’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) to survey the affected area.

“Nord Stream AG still awaits the decision of the authorities on granting necessary permits for the damage assessment,” it added.

On November 2 it identified the damaged section to be on Line 1 in Swedish EEZ, saying, “according to preliminary results of the damage site inspection, technogenic craters with a depth of 3 to 5 meters were found on the seabed at a distance of about 248 m from each other”.

“The section of the pipe between the craters is destroyed, the radius of pipe fragments dispersion is at least 250 m”.

Nord Stream AG in its latest update said the Danish Geodata Agency on November 11 granted it a permit to conduct probes around the affected area.

The Swedish Security Service reported a week later its investigation showed the damaged parts had suffered “gross sabotage”.

“In the crime scene investigations carried out onsite in the Baltic Sea, the extensive damage to the gas pipelines resulting from detonations has been thoroughly documented. Several seizures have been made, including foreign items”, the government agency said in a news release.

“Explosive residue was identified on a number of the seized and analyzed foreign items”.

It did not identify the items but said “advanced analysis” was still in progress.

Pulitzer Prize-winning U.S. investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote February 8 he had been informed U.S. Navy divers “planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines”. He cited in the blog post an unnamed “source with direct knowledge of the operational planning”.

The operation, Hersh claimed, transpired “under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22” with help from the Norwegian Navy.

Hersh argued that as Russian troops massed on the border with Ukraine and war loomed, “President Joseph Biden saw the pipelines as a vehicle for Vladimir Putin to weaponize natural gas for his political and territorial ambitions”.

He said White House spokesperson Adrienne Watson had replied by email to a request for comment - “this is false and complete fiction.”

“Tammy Thorp, a spokesperson for the Central Intelligence Agency, similarly wrote: ‘This claim is completely and utterly false’”, Hersh said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the incidents were a “terrorist attack” by state actors.

“Who benefits from Russian gas being supplied to Europe only through Ukraine? That is who blew it up”, Putin told a press conference, according to a Kremlin transcript December 22.

“Nobody is investigating. We had an opportunity just once to inspect the sites of explosions”.

Citing intelligence “reviewed by U.S. officials”, a New York Times article March 7 said a pro-Ukrainian group conducted “the attack”. The U.S. officials said they had no proof Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky or his top security officials had been involved in the operation, according to the article. The report said the officials declined to say more about the intelligence or how it had been obtained.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelensky, tweeted the same day Ukraine had “nothing to do with the Baltic Sea mishap” and had no information about pro-Kryiv “sabotage groups”.

Leonid Slutsky, head of the Russian lower house of parliament, reportedly called the article “yet another red herring, aimed at distracting the public from real perpetrators by pointing to an abstract rebel group”.

“But who would believe that an operation of this scope, which essentially is of military nature, can be carried out by a previously unknown sabotage group?" Russian state-owned news agency TASS quoted him as saying in a Telegram post, which is no longer accessible.

The United Nations Security Council on Monday rejected Russia’s request for a probe into the incidents. Brasilia, Beijing and Moscow voted in favor but with 12 abstentions there was a lack of sufficient votes.

“The resolution, if adopted, would have requested the Secretary-General to establish an international, independent investigation commission to conduct a comprehensive, transparent and impartial international investigation of all aspects of the act of sabotage on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines — including identification of its perpetrators, sponsors, organizers and accomplices”, the UN said in a news release.

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Photo Credit – iStock.com/Dragan Mihajlovic