Russia is not ruling out the possibility of repairing the Nordstream gas pipelines, the Russian Embassy in Denmark said in a statement on its website on Friday.
The Russian embassy criticized the efforts to investigate the pipelines following four explosions that took them offline—some say indefinitely—because the Russian side was excluded from the investigations.
“The Danish side’s reluctance to involve Russia’s representatives in the ongoing investigation undermines its credibility. Limiting the circle of participating states, which are either already members of NATO, or on the way to this alliance, turns the study into politically preconceived,” the statement read, adding that it would investigate the possibility of conducting an investigation on the site of the explosions itself.
“The Russian side does not rule out the possibility of repairing gas pipelines, but a decision on this can be made after examining the site and assessing the extent of damage to gas pipelines.”
Russia also said it was ready to supply gas to Europe through the undamaged line of the Nordstream 2 pipeline. The $11 billion contentious Nordstream 2 pipeline, however, failed to receive certification from Germany to start the flow of gas. Germany halted the project, which sought to double the amount of gas flowing from Russia to Germany, in February after Russia recognized as independent two breakaway territories in Ukraine.
The Swedish Security Service found on Thursday that detonations caused the explosion that damaged the pipelines, “strengthening the suspicions of serious sabotage.”
The Nordstream 1 pipeline has the capacity to send 59 billion cubic meters of gas from Russia to Europe each year. Russia had stopped the flow of gas into Europe via Nordstream 1 prior to the explosion, stating that flows would not resume until sanctions were lifted.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
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That is probably why Western nations investigating the sabotage haven’t involved Russia with their investigations. Limiting the investigations to NATO members undermines its objectiveness and aims to hide the real culprit behind it.
But the most probable culprit is the country with a motive, one that has a long history of opposing the building of Soviet and Russian oil and gas pipelines since the days of the former Soviet Union, one that could benefit handsomely by replacing Russian piped natural gas to the EU with its LNG exports and one who has a geopolitical determination to sever the EU’s dependence on Russian gas for ever.
Any independent judge in a court of law looking at this circumstantial evidence wouldn’t think twice before giving his verdict and his verdict will be that the evidence fits only one country: the United States.
Dr Mamdouh G Salameh
International Oil Economist
Global Energy Expert