Germany Discovers New Energy Pipelines to Replace Russian Gas Have Been Sabotaged

PRODUCTION - 18 December 2023, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Sassnitz-Mukran: Large pipes
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Oliver JJ Lane

The German Federal Prosecutor’s Office is investigating “suspicions of unconstitutional sabotage” after holes were discovered drilled into a new gas delivery pipe installed to overcome the country’s dependence on imported Russian hydrocarbons.

Germany believes a number of one-centimetre (approximately half, or 13/32ths of an inch) holes have been “drilled” into a new gas delivery pipeline delivering the energy source to Germany’s national grid, an act of what is believed to be sabotage discovered in November but made public now. The exact cause of the damage or motivation behind an attempt to sabotage Germany’s energy imports is not known, but the Schleswig-Holsteinische Zeitungsverlag reports Dutch-German energy company Gasunie has now confirmed the damage took place, and that they believe it was caused by “third-party intervention”.

23 March 2023, Schleswig-Holstein, Brunsbüttel: The floating LNG terminal “Hoegh Gannet” (l) is located in the Elbe port of Brunsbüttel. The Kiel Canal (NOK) can be seen in the background. Photo: Christian Charisius/dpa (Photo by Christian Charisius/picture alliance via Getty Images)

The 35-mile pipe is intended to deliver gas brought to Germany aboard LNG carriers, which is cooled to a liquid state for safe transit at sea and re-gassified once it reaches the shore of the customer nation and then piped ashore. In this case, a floating LNG terminal receives and regasified the LNG at Brunsbüttel on the river Elbe and sends it ashore, and it was this pipe carrying the gas towards the national grid which was allegedly drilled several times.

The investigation has been taken over by the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, underlining the seriousness with which the potential case of “unconstitutional sabotage” is being treated. The terminal was handed over to Deutsche Energy Terminal GmbH (DET) at the start of this year.

It is possible the sabotage could be related to the Ukraine-Russia war that necessitated the construction of the new LNG terminals in the first place, and The Times also notes they have been the subject of “heavy” protests by green activists too.

Germany rushed to diversify its energy sources as, despite repeated warnings from former U.S. President Donald Trump that it made them vulnerable, they relied very heavily on Russian energy imports to underwrite the national economy. Many European nations import LNG, but upon the outbreak of the Ukraine War Germany didn’t have a single LNG import terminal of its own, and the Brunsbüttel regasification plant is one of several ordered to be built at speed to overcome that.

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