Given what several NATO country-members see as a growing threat to critical maritime infrastructure, Germany and Norway will formally ask NATO to coordinate efforts to protect undersea pipelines and other such infrastructure, some two months after explosions ripped holes in the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines, disabling them.
In a statement that raised eyebrows among European pipeliners, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said last Thursday that it had prevented Ukrainian special services from carrying out what it said was sabotage on the 'South Stream' gas pipeline.
Druzhba oil pipeline operations in Ukraine, partially suspended last week without explanation, have resumed at the scheduled volume, Russia's state-owned oil pipeline operator Transneft reported today.
An explosion on a main gas pipeline northeast of St. Petersburg, which further connects to Nord Stream 1, occurred over the weekend. Natural gas in Nord Stream 1 continued to flow.
Enbridge, the international pipeline company based in Calgary, Alberta Canada, has approved the expansion of the southern segment of its British Columbia pipeline system, a project that would cost up to $2.65 billion after strong demand from crude oil producers.
Norway took immediate action after the 26 September discovery of the severely damaged Nord Stream 1 & 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea of the Danish and Swedish coasts to increase pipeline inspections on its 8,800-km pipeline network connecting Norway with continental Europe and Britain.
The Power of Siberia project is a unified gas transmission system (GTS) involving the development of a 4,000km-long gas pipeline to transfer natural gas from the Irkutsk gas production centers in the prolific Eastern Russia to the Far East and China. This week Gazprom announced that the Kovykta gas field, the largest in the region, is expected to come onstream in December.
South African petrochemicals company Sasol said this past week that it was partnering with steel pipe maker ArcelorMittal of South Africa to explore carbon capture technology and steel production using green hydrogen.
In a proposed pipeline project that flies in the face of the conventional European consensus to lessen the continent's dependency on Russian oil after Russian President Putin's war of aggression in Ukraine, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announced this month the construction of a 128-km oil pipeline connecting the northern Serbian City of Novi Sad with Hungary.
The European Green Deal identifies hydrogen as key to a clean and circular economy.
