A Fifth Nord Stream Bomb
and some more information from the Nord Stream vs Lloyds lawsuit
It’s been over a year since I wrote about our expedition to the Nord Stream rupture sites. I embarked on that trip, in part because I was intrigued by a claim of Seymour Hersh that the saboteurs had put two bombs on each pipeline. He also wrote
“officials in Germany, Sweden, and Denmark had decided shortly after the pipeline bombings to send teams to the site to recover the one mine that has not gone off. He said they were too late; an American ship had sped to the site within a day or two and recovered the mine and other materials”
If only one out of eight bombs had failed, there would perhaps be some traces, like craters, from the seven bombs which actually went off. In our expedition, we scanned wide areas around the explosion sites but we couldn’t find any traces from more than four bombs. Two of those bombs had been placed on the same pipeline, and I concluded that that was probably a mistake. The earth’s magnetic field was almost reversed in the area near the steel pipeline, so it was plausible that the divers got disoriented. I got disoriented with my camera drone, and so were BBC who went there to make a map but ended up showing it upside down. The discovery that a blunder saved one of the four pipelines from destruction somewhat discredited the idea that “Russia must have done it, because they left one string undamaged on purpose”, but on the other hand, it supported the idea that the sabotage was done in a low budget sailboat operation. The Atlantic had a chapter describing “The Mistake” in this context, as well as several other newspapers which have reported on our findings. I myself, have said multiple times on various podcasts that I don’t believe in the eight bombs any more. I thought it was exactly four bombs, and if not for the mistake, all four pipelines would have been destroyed.
Well, I thought it was exactly four bombs until two weeks ago when I received a court filing made by Nord Stream AG in their ongoing lawsuit against insurance companies Lloyds&Arch.
In Nord Stream’s amended claims document I read:
“Line 2 sustained damage in the form of a circumferential indentation at KP998.743 on the south side of the pipeline (the “Dent”) “
“Line 2” in this context is what Nord Stream 2 calls “String B”. In the pair of pipes that make up Nord Stream 1, “Line 2” is the south eastern pipe. I call it “Line B” or “String B” to be consistent with the NS2 terminology. The KP998.743 notation depicts the distance along the pipeline from the Russian landfall station, and luckily the claims document also gave the location of the open end of the rupture which we knew was 6.18 km downstream of the same pipeline. Therefore it was easy to figure out the exact location of the Dent by measuring the distance on the nautical chart. The Dent was on the B-string, and very close to the successful bomb on the A-string.
Nord Stream AG avoided in their claims document to assert that The Dent was caused by another bomb. I find it an entertaining feature of this dispute, that the Nord Stream lawyers, shrewdly in my opinion, are forcing the defendants to prove their case by revealing details which have previously been hidden to the public. This had happened in their exchange of written documents before, when Lloyds wrote that Nord Stream’s terrorist coverage wasn’t valid because a government did it.
By saying that all bombings were ordered by the same government in a single event, the insurers explained that they were not liable to pay, but if the court would decide otherwise, they should only pay for a single occurrence, not once for each rupture as Nord Stream’s had claimed. It was on this background that Nord Stream AG presented the Dent as possibly caused at another point of time by some unknown external force. The insurers didn't buy it . Their response filed on September 30, 2024 showed extraordinary insights into the forensic secrets of the Nord Stream investigations. They write:
“The Defendants aver that the Dent was caused by an explosion on or about 26 September 2022, as part of the attack on the NS1 Pipelines that also caused the Rupture Damage. The Defendants will rely upon, inter alia, the following matters: (a) the lateral force required to cause the Dent could only have been (or, at least, was more likely than not to have been) generated by an explosive device; (b) the Dent is located at a welded field joint on Line 2, and the explosions that caused the Rupture Damage also occurred at welded field joints (which are the weakest points of the NS1 Pipelines); (c) the location of the Dent on Line 2 is adjacent to the location of the Rupture Damage on Line 1 (the distance between the two being approximately 90 metres); and (d) the presence of unexplained objects and/or debris on the seabed immediately adjacent to the Dent indicates the use of an explosive device. The Defendants will rely upon expert evidence as to the cause of the Dent in due course”
The insurers had access to some technical details which I don’t think the sonar and photographic surveys performed by Nord Stream AG could reveal. I have spoken to sources at Nord Stream 2, and learned that they have requested information from the Swedish investigation but this has been denied. They appealed and it was denied again. I didn’t think Nord Stream AG had any possibility to determine that all bombs were placed on “welded field joints”, since the investigations seemed to have collected the debris in the central area of the Nord Stream 1 explosion sites, and the open ends which have been photographed show no signs of direct damage from explosives. But the information provided by Lloyds&Arch in their defense document leaves little doubt that the Dent was caused by a bomb. I was wrong of me to assert that there were exactly four bombs. We now know that there were at least five bombs, and the placement right across another bomb also suggested a mode of operation which made perfect sense for divers who needed to optimize the use of their limited time at the bottom. The two strings run just 90 meters apart, and for Nord Stream 2 they are just 40 meters apart in the area, so it would be efficient to rig both strings with explosives in the same dive.
I was of course disappointed that we didn’t find the Dent in our own expedition in May 2023. Our sonar image of The Dent showed a meandering pipe in bad resolution because we did it on our last evening at the sites when the wind had picked up. Waves made it impossible to keep a constant speed with the survey ship, so the “sonar fish” which is towed near the bottom was swimming up and down, degrading the image quality. The 15cm indentation wasn’t visible to us, but now that we know about the Dent, we notice a small crater revealed by the sonar shadow of the pipeline.
I put red question marks in Fig. 1 above at the locations where the saboteurs would have placed bombs if their operational plan was the same as it was at the Dent. I still maintain the possibility that there was no bomb at NS2B near the NS2A bomb, and for that reason, an extra trip was made to the southeast of Bornholm to place a final bomb. I think they placed that bomb on the A-string, because their compasses had told them that the B-string was already rigged with a bomb. I’m not abandoning that theory, but since we now know they had more than four bombs, and had placed bombs on adjacent pipes in one location, we must also maintain the possibility that they might have done the same at other sites as well. Maybe there were unexploded bombs, and maybe they were picked up by the Americans who knew exactly where to look. I’m not saying that’s likely. I’m just saying it can’t be ruled out anymore after the discovery of the Dent.
The judge in the Lloyds vs Nord Stream case has put the parties on a tight schedule allowing Nord Stream to file an amended reply and Lloyds to file a “rejoiner” before the first case management conference which is fixed for November 7. In the amended defense, Lloyds&Arch argued bluntly that the attack was ordered by the Ukrainian government in an act of war against Russia. I wonder if Nord Stream AG will find a way in their next reply to effectively counter that claim. Legal Scholar Said Mahmoudi has explained to me that the way the insurance policy is written, the insurers must prove, not only that a government did it, but also prove which government it was. I wonder if they must prove that Ukraine did it on their own, and not with help and supervision of the USA. After all, USA is not officially at war with Russia, but Russian officials have repeatedly said that the USA was behind the attack. Would it be possible for a British judge to rule that USA committed and act of war against Russia or Germany, and would that also be a valid reason to not pay damages?
I look forward to the next move by Russian owned and Swiss incorporated Nord Stream AG. Will they demand irrefutable evidence from the insurers that Ukraine did it all on their own and by their own motivation?
Filing is due tomorrow October 7.
very interesting. any news regarding the bizarre timing and location of the first bombing in the morning? why was it next to the place where the Russian ship continued laying the pipe?