Sabotage. Everyone agrees that leaks from the North Stream they are not casual. What is not so clear is who has been The responsible. And it is that in every Cold War, information flows with difficulty and cannot always be contrasted. What is clear is that the Nord Stream gas pipelines have stopped working. And some say they are completely useless.
pipelines North Stream are a project united Germany and Russia by sea sending Siberian gas to one of Europe’s economic engines to meet its energy needs. On the official page he talks about submerged pipes of 1,224 kilometers that send, or rather, used to send, gas from Russian reserves to European markets through northern Germany. A key energy infrastructure that should last at least 50 years but that the geopolitical tensions between Europe and Russia, with the United States also involved, have settled.
North Stream 1 and at some point North Stream 2pending approval by the German authorities, were to meet the demand for gas from much of europe. In the south, the demand is more or less covered by the gas that Spain imports, stores and distributes initially from Algeria and more recently also from Morocco. To which is added the liquefied gas bought from the United States that arrives in large ships. And also the one that arrives from Algeria, by boat, to the ports in the south of France.
But main supplier of gas to Europe It’s still Russia. Without going any further, last year, Russian gas accounted for 40% of gas consumed in Europe. With gas pipelines that reach northern Italy, central and northern Germany by land and pass through countries such as Poland, Austria and practically all of Eastern Europe if we also include oil pipelines.
The Nord Stream pipelines were key to get enough gas enough to face the European winter. Both to generate electricity and to heat the homes of millions of Europeans. And, although from the month of august Russia had interrupted the shipment of gas via Nord Stream, the sabotage has finally ended this possibility.
The birth of North Stream
Nord Stream is known as a project that includes two pipes or pipelines. Nord Stream 1 consists of two pipelines. And Nord Stream 2, from two others. The first was already underway. The works began in April 2010, ended in June 2011 and began pump liquefied gas in November of that same 2011. The second pipeline runs parallel to the first. That is why the project is known on its official website as twin pipe system North Stream.
the enlargement, North Stream 2began to be managed in May 2011. And, although it should have been finished in 2012, or so its official website says, in reality it was not finished until September 2021. In that delay there was a first attempt to reach the United Kingdom, but it was rejected. Then there were problems with Poland, which blocked an attempt to bring together several European companies to finance the project. And it was not until 2018 that the project received building permits. Once Nord Stream 2 is finished, just technical approval was missing from the German authorities. But, even if Germany had given the go-ahead, Russia had ceased to provide gas from this summer.
Both systems of twin pipes They run in the depths of the Baltic Sea as they pass along the coasts of Finland, Sweden and Denmark, in addition to the two main beneficiaries, Russia and Germany. Hence these countries had to carry out technical studies to analyze the impact of gas pipelines in the area and issue the pertinent permits.
If all had gone well, each pipeline would have sent 27,500 cubic meters of gas per year. In total, 55,000 cubic meters between the two. Linking Vyborg (Russia) with Greifswald (Germany) through Nord Stream 1 and Ust-Luga (Russia) with the same German city.
An installation, let us remember, that is submerged in the baltic sea. Hence, Sweden, through the nearby island of Bronholm, was the first country to alert of gas leaks detected in the area. Information that was later corroborated by the Danish authorities. Up to four simultaneous leaks that could affect both gas pipelines.
When Nord Stream was North Transgas
The origin of Nord Stream dates back to 1997. That year, Gazprom Y Nestea Finnish oil company, create a company to launch a common project. North Transgas Oy It will have the mission of building and operating a gas pipeline that will connect Russia with northern Germany through the Baltic Sea. Come on, what it was until recently North Stream. A German gas company joins the project, Ruhrgaswhich will later be part of EON.
As I mentioned above, the project runs along the coast of Finland, Sweden and Denmark, in addition to Germany and Russia. Hence, these countries began their corresponding technical studies to analyze the impact of the project. In the studies, begun in 1998, there was talk of also linking Finland and Sweden with this gas pipeline. But it was discarded.
From here several changes take place in the gas consortium that the North Transgas gas pipeline has to carry out and that we know today as Nord Stream. Originally there were two. The Russian Gazprom and the finnish Neste. Then the German joins them Ruhrgas. And in 2001 another German company joined, the oil and gas producer Wintershall. The delays to start the works and other internal twists and turns mean that in 2005, the Finnish Nestenow known as Fortumdecides to get out of the project and sell his part to Gazprom. This makes the Russian take full control of the company created for the project.
Hence, that same year, in September 2005, they decided to create a new company owned by the consortium of companies at that time. The company will be called first North European Gas Pipeline Companybut later it will be known as Nord Stream AG. The participants will be, as we have seen before, the Gazprom, E.ON (which was done with Ruhrgas at the time) and BASF (via Wintershall). These three will be joined by two more companies, which we will see later.
A consortium with Russian control
In short: behind the ambitious gas project North Stream is the company Nord Stream AG, based in Zug, Switzerland. As indicated in his own page officer, this is a consortium of five companies created in 2005 to plan, build and operate the two Nord Stream gas pipelines. Those five companies are Gazprom, Wintershall, PEG Infrastruktur, Gasunie and ENGIE.
- Gazprom is the largest Russian energy company whose main shareholder is the russian government.
- Wintershall It is the largest German producer of crude oil and gas. It is owned by the also German BASF.
- PEG Infrastructure is a subsidiary of EON, one of the largest European electricity companies. It is German and operates in more than 30 countries. In 2006 he could have bought the then Spanish Endesa.
- Gasunie is a company from the Netherlands that also operates in Germany. It is dedicated to gas infrastructure and transportation.
- ENGIE is a French energy company. It operates in 27 European countries and 48 worldwide. It arises in 2008 after merging Gaz de France Y Suez.
I spoke of the first three companies on the list before. Gazprom was the one who started the project in 1997 and was joined by the two German companies between 1998 and 2001. The other two companies that make up the current consortium hardly have any weight in the project, but it is worth mentioning them to see the scope of Nord Stream in All Europe. Gasunie joins Nord Stream at the end of 2007. And in 2010, they are joined by ENGIE. By then, the project is already underway and the first contracts have been signed to design the gas pipelines, turbines and other elements of the infrastructure.
Despite the fact that five companies are participating in Nord Stream, 51% of the project is owned by Gazprom. Mainly because it is the one who provides, or provided, the gas that ran through the gas pipelines. And because he was involved in the project From the beginning. And having control by the Russian government, he served Russia as a weapon to confront Europe against the sanction packages and affecting Russian citizens, businesses and economic interests. First raising the price and then cutting off the supply.
A game of collaborators and dependency
But the geostrategy it doesn’t stay there. To speed up the construction of North Stream, the consortium of companies led by Russia’s Gazprom did much of its part. Already in 2008 he contracted the services of the former Prime Minister of Finland, paavo lipponen, for that country to give its approval to the gas pipelines passing through Finnish waters. He wasn’t the only one.
Since 2005, and after losing the elections against Angela Merkel, Gerhard Schroeder started working at Nord Stream. And in the spring of 2022, Schröder was forced to resign from his position on the board of directors of Rosnneft, a Russian oil company. More than anything because the European Commission intended to include him on the blacklist of collaborators with Russia and after the German Parliament withdrew one of the benefits he had for having been chancellor.
Precisely, the relationship between German politicians and Russia is very close. Too. Matthias Platzeckformer chairman of the Social Democratic Party and former chairman of the Land of Brandenburg, left politics in 2013 to become director of the German-Russian Forum. And if we look across the parliamentary spectrum, Alternative for Germany has always supported the Nord Stream project. And it is that in 2018, a party delegation visited Crimea, in full crisis between Russia and Ukraineand called for ending sanctions on Russia.
And beyond hidden interests, the energetic politics from Germany made Nord Stream even more valuable to Europe. Especially when, following the Fukushima incident, he decided abandon nuclear power despite not having real alternatives yet. Or if. That alternative was Nord Stream in a context in which Russia still had no intention of blackmailing Europe with its gas.
In summary, North Stream it was and has been much more than an infrastructure to supply gas to Europe. Economic interests are mixed with politicians. Both from its planning and approval by European countries to its implementation and expansion. And, once underway, it has served as weapon to pressure Europe in the middle of a real war between Russia and Ukraine that is included in a new Cold War between the United States and Russia.