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Deliberate acts of sabotage were responsible for the damage done to two major Russian underwater natural gas pipelines, European leaders said Wednesday, with multiple suspects, murky motives and a deepening divide between the Kremlin and the West serving only to spook already uneasy global energy markets.
Some in Europe were already suggesting Russia itself was behind the incident, even as the Kremlin pointed the finger at President Biden and accused the U.S. of perpetrating a terrorist attack.
The heated but inconclusive back-and-forth over the Baltic Sea leaks from the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines underscores the leverage Russia still holds over European energy supplies and how a disruption to Russian natural gas flow carries serious economic ramifications for the continent. European leaders were already bracing for a long, cold winter and had been urging member nations to scale back their fuel use amid cuts last summer in Russian gas deliveries.
Moscow blamed those cuts on technical issues with the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, but U.S. and European officials generally believe it was Russia’s way of exacting revenge for Europe’s economic sanctions on Russia following its February invasion of Ukraine. Russia, one theory went, is the prime beneficiary from chaos, terror and uncertainty in global energy markets, and the pipeline disasters increased all three.
But basic questions remained unanswered more than three days after “seismic events” were detected near the pipelines, which were not operational but still leaked stored fuel into international waters just Danish and Swedish territorial waters. Investigators offered no clues publicly on who carried out the attack, how it was done, what was the motive and what did the perpetrator hope to achieve.
The three pipeline leaks sparked immediate speculation that Russia was upping the ante in its use of energy supplies as a weapon, speculation a top spokesman for President Vladimir Putin dismissed as “stupid.”
But coming on the heels of Mr. Putin’s veiled threat last week to deploy nuclear weapons if his war in Ukraine continues to go south, the alleged sabotage of the two pipelines will further speculation that Moscow is turning to desperate measures as its ground invasion in Ukraine stalls and its citizens at home increasingly protest against the war.
The impact on global energy markets was immediate. Though neither Nord Stream pipeline was currently delivering gas to the continent, European gas prices shot up by 10% Wednesday as fuel leaked into the Baltic Sea. That spike came after a 7% jump on Tuesday.
