Sun24 Press

Episode 1: The Introduction

The destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline is one of the most consequential acts of sabotage in modern history, yet it remains unsolved.

The reports we have heard about it are usually either biased, superficial, or deflective.

This is the first podcast episode about the Nord Stream affair, the result of in-depth research from many sociopolitical angles. The podcast covers a timeline stretching from several months before the explosions to the events that followed on September 26, 2022.

Contents:
An extensive investigation (→ 0:34)
What is this NordStream pipeline ? (→ 02:16)
A pipeline worked until sanctioned (→ 04:44)
A huge scandal surrounding the Ukraine pipeline (→ 07:14)
Angela Merkel, Germany and NordStream (→ 08:26)
The timeline of the NordStram gas pipeline (→ 11:00)

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Episode 1

NordStream Refilled - The Introduction

00:00

Here is the link to the many scandals surrounding US State Department officials part of the Obama administration and Ukraine's gas companies:
a) substack.com/p/corruption-in...
b) ceenergynews.com/whos -in-charge/us...

Here a very important US government assessment on the German-Russian gas pipeline from as early as 2018:
govinfo.gov/content/pkg/...

Next
Episode 2 - The US Government, the UK and Ukraine

Transcript 

(Music) 

Martin: Hello everyone to our first episode of a very brand new podcast which we just baptized Nord Stream Refilled, The Gas Pipeline Saga Unveiled. This is the episode number one. I'm sitting here with a researcher from Finland who has made an extensive study unparalleled in my view, who has analyzed tons and tons of data. Maybe introduce yourself.

Mortymer: Hello everybody, I would like to brief you a little bit about my research and what has been done while uncovering this important case about Nord Stream. 

Martin: You started your analysis regarding Nord Stream when exactly, do you remember? 

Mortymer: It started with thinking who has done it, why it has happened. Slowly, it evolved in a very professional investigation which collected a lot of data, analyzed a lot of hypotheses and possible outcomes. 

Martin: You have been involved in international relations studies and you're using a lot of open sources and public records for your research, is that correct? 

Mortymer: Correct, I do not have any secret source, I do not have any data which is not accessible to anyone. I'm using data from the public sources but that is not a problem, that's actually a feature. I've created a comprehensible record over the events which happened before, during and after Nord Stream was blown up. 

Martin: And you suspect a crime that was committed? 

Mortymer: Well, actually I'm suspecting two crimes. First crime is the destructions of the infrastructure, key European infrastructure, and the other crime is the cover-up of the perpetrator, which is very, very serious if it's proven true.

Martin: Maybe we can really start with the very basics. What actually is this gas pipeline at all? I mean many are familiar with Nord Stream but for those that have some rudimentary knowledge about it, why did the gas pipeline at all came into realization? 

Mortymer: Nord Stream pipelines are infrastructure which is bringing cheap Russian gas into the European market and there exist actually two of them, Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2. Each of them is combined from the thin pipeline A and B, so A and B for Nord Stream 1 and A and B for Nord Stream 2. The length is about over 1000 kilometers and they go from Russia to the bottom of the Baltic Sea to Germany, to Lubin, where they enter the European network and the gas is sent to the customers. 

Martin: Now as I understand there were political issues regarding undersea pipelines from the beginning, weren't there? 

Mortymer: Yes, correct. Every importer of energy tries to diversify. Russia tries to diversify its selling to different markets and Europe is also trying to diversify. That means that we want to have as many possibilities as possible and push suppliers to compete so we'll get a better price. Russia also tries to diversify and not depend only on one customer. But the geography tells actually how things should be because we get the energy which is the closest, most available and the easiest. So in the medium to long run we should actually be getting energy from Russia because there is no other possibility. 

Martin: But there were political conflicts in this undersea gas pipeline and were there different pipelines? 

Mortymer: There are actually many pipelines in Europe. If we focus on those which go from Russia to Europe there is one going to Poland, there are two going through the Ukraine and two going from Russia through Black Sea to Turkey. To Turkey goes the Blue Stream and Turk Stream and the first one is supplying gas only for the Turkish market, the other one is supplying gas to southern European customers. The pipeline after the Crimean crisis in 2014 which was going through Poland was working until it has been sanctioned and there were issues between the Polish customers and the Russian exporters. Right now it's not delivering because of the sanctions. 

Martin: One of the key milestones was the occupation of Crimea, Russia's occupation of the island. That seemed to have changed the ball game for these gas pipelines from the beginning. Is that a milestone that you agree with? 

Mortymer: Correct. The energy strategy of many states has been very much affected by the Crimean crisis and it changed the way how we look at what would be the future. Those two Ukrainian pipelines which were delivering securely gas from the Soviet Union to Europe have been working very well for years and years. But they need upgrades, they need investment and unfortunately Ukraine didn't have so much money. Russia was not willing to invest in the legally unsound Ukraine, well let's say differently. Russia felt that their investment was something what they wanted to do and they wanted to avoid the transport fees to pay to Ukraine. Every year Ukraine was getting about 2 billion euros in transport fees for the gas which went through its land. There were also transport fees for other countries. By building a project which goes through the Baltic Sea, through the exclusive economic zones of different countries, it strips these fees. So if the gas goes directly from Russia to Germany and it doesn't pass through different countries' territorial zones, then they don't need to pay those fees. That means at least 2 billion euros per year. And if you look at the costs of those pipelines, the first one was about 7.5 billion, the other one was around let's say 10 billion euros, that's 17 or 18 billion euros. Return on investment when we just have the 2 billions in savings would be 5 to 7 years, which is a tremendous great business case for companies involved. 

Martin: Now I heard also that there was a pretty huge scandal surrounding the Ukraine pipeline. During the, I think, last years of the Obama government in the United States, the company that was dealing with the Russian gas flowing through Ukraine was in the hand of Ukrainian government organization. And during the Obama times this company was switched to a more or less private company that was situated, located right at the border outside in, I think, Slovakia. This new setup company, not even located in the Ukraine anymore, was captured by globalist players that suddenly were responsible for more or less all the gas that was flowing through the Ukraine. And they pocketed in deep. I provide some links below the podcast for people that are interested in researching this issue a little bit more.

(Music)

Martin: So what seems puzzling to me is that in 2014 when Crimea was occupied, why is it that the then Angela Merkel government in Germany didn't just suspend, first of all, plans to extend gas pipelines and even found ways to substitute those, as many claim, a huge and big dependency on Russian gas? What's your take on this? 

Mortymer: She actually said once that pipelines were a way to work together with Russia by connecting us economically. We will bring stability into the political relations. 

Martin: Now that's an interesting point because many people are probably not familiar with the political infighting in Germany. And surprisingly, it was that both sides of the political aisle at that time more or less supported gas pipeline projects from Russia. Even the Schröder, which is a social-democrat party, agreed with the Angela Merkel conservative political party that the Russian projects should be enhanced. Really strange vibrations at the time, so to say. The political spectrum was more or less unified, which is very rare and on very few political issues. Now, what was the US take on this whole development and a closer move of energy supply from Russia to Europe? What's your view on that? 

Mortymer: Well, it's generally known that we in Europe don't have such great resources like Middle East or we don't have such a great shale gas or sandbars like United States or Canada has, so we have to import energy from somewhere. If you import energy, then you use the energy, but you shouldn't be too much dependent on one supplier because that creates certain risks. Nord Stream 1 has always been reliably delivering us gas and has actually never been under sanctions until it stopped working until there were issues with the turbines and there was a force majeure, which is a stopping of the deliveries due to technical issues and documentation issues, but we can speak about that much later. Concerning the Nord Stream 2, it has never been officially commissioned. It is still lacking the security clearance from a German state and without that it cannot be put back into functioning.

Martin: Maybe at this point we should mention a little bit the timeline. Now, maybe it makes sense to just correlate the political events that happened, especially in the US, since we start shifting a little bit right now and talking a bit more about what happened in the United States government. So, for eight years we had an Obama administration. Everyone expected Hillary Clinton to win the 2016 election and then suddenly something unexpected happened, right? President in the White House, Donald Trump, and that caused a tremendous policy shift, didn't it? 

Mortymer: Yes, correct, but let me say one thing. Nord Stream 1 started already around 2000 and it was originally idea of the Finnish company Neste and counterparties and German ones and they started to develop the project. It was already in 1997 when the project plans surfaced to the public. It was the Finnish oil company Neste and it formed the joint company Nordgas Oil, which is like LTD, for the construction and operation of the gas pipeline from Russia to northern Germany. They were discussing different possibilities where the pipelines could go and suggestion was to put it on the Finnish soil, on the land, and then to the Swedish land and through Denmark down to Germany. But Gazprom rejected that offer and said very clearly that they do not want to replace a country risk, aka Ukraine, with other country risk, Finland and Sweden. They wanted to put it on the bottom of the sea and protect themselves, because international law supposedly, as they understood it then, are strong enough to protect the pipeline. 

Martin: So with all these efforts starting as early as 1997, there seemed to was a shift in energy policy generally towards a much closer cooperation of Europe with Russia, which certainly caught the attraction of the United States later on, because at that time, at the beginning of 1997, again, the policy I think in the US was much more relaxed and open, free markets.

(Music)

Speaker:
Mortymer - NordStream expert investigator
Martin - Investigative lead at Sun24 Press

Organization and realization:
Sun24 Press

NordStream Refilled

Episode 1

00:00

NordStream Refilled

The Gas Pipeline Saga Unveiled - Episode 8

NordStream Refilled

The Gas Pipeline Saga Unveiled - Episode 7

NordStream Refilled

The Gas Pipeline Saga Unveiled - Episode 6

NordStream Refilled

The Gas Pipeline Saga Unveiled - Episode 5

NordStream Refilled

The Gas Pipeline Saga Unveiled - Episode 4

NordStream Refilled

The Gas Pipeline Saga Unveiled - Episode 3

NordStream Refilled

The Gas Pipeline Saga Unveiled - Episode 2

NordStream Refilled

About high-flying Poseidon planes over the NordStream pipelines

Russia Projection Stream 2

About a nordic gasline sabotage and monks from Poland

Intelligent Defenseware

About Palantir's Gotham AI and the history of intel agencies

A Crowded Strike

About Crowdstrike and ill-led IT analyses

Uncle Joe's Cabin

About Joe Biden's corruption scandals and the beginning of the civil war

The Sounds of Silence

About flight MH370 and radio waves

SwedenLeaks

About Wikileaks persecutions and Swedish Knullkompis

Uranium One

Timeline of events and map

Blaming Russia with Boomerang

About the biggest political scandal in the history of the United States

The TSMC-Union

About Taiwanese semiconductor triangles in Europe

Munich

About consulting organisations and the history of Germany's secret capital

The Chip Reversal

About Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturing and toothpaste