[thetinymite]

Ed Crooks, formerly of the FT and now at WoodMac had this to say in his energy pulse this week.

> While there is clearly still a great deal that we don’t know about this incident, one crucial aspect of Hersh’s story — the supposed US motive for sabotaging the pipelines — seems flawed. He argues that “President Joseph Biden saw the pipelines as a vehicle for Vladimir Putin to weaponise natural gas for his political and territorial ambitions” in Europe, and was determined to stop that. But by September 2022, when the blasts happened, Russia had already stopped flows through Nord Stream, claiming it was unable to operate the pipeline because of the West’s sanctions on critical equipment that required maintenance. There was consensus among commentators and politicians that flows were unlikely to resume.

> Blowing up Nord Stream did not really change the outlook for European gas markets. One thing it did do was provide a more solid justification for Gazprom’s argument that it was unable to supply contracted volumes to Germany. And that is something that will weigh in future arbitration of damages claims from European utilities.

https://www.woodmac.com/news/opinion/us-oil-demand-on-course...