Making of an energy crisis

High-level treason and plotting leaves us cold for winter

- by SERENA WYLDE

Half a pound of tuppenny lies, Half a pound of treason, All the arms that money can buy, Pop goes all reason

AS energy prices bite, and British householders wonder whether to turn on their heating, it is worth looking back to what caused this hardship.

It is over two years since the two pairs of Russian gas pipelines, known as Nord Stream 1 and 2, were sabotaged in the Baltic Sea, close to the Danish island of Bornholm.

What has the 'investigation' into this crime -the crime of blowing up a major piece of international infrastructure, and causing environmental damage - yielded to date?

The pipelines run 745 miles along the Baltic seabed from Vyborg in north-west Russia to Lubmin in north-east Germany. They are owned by Nord Stream AG, of which the Russian company Gazprom holds 51 per cent of the stock, and four European energy suppliers (two in Germany, one in France and one in the Netherlands) hold the remaining 49 per cent.

The project was intended to ensure the longterm security of Europe's energy supplies.

Since 2011, when the first pair of pipelines Nord Stream 1 - was completed. Russia had been supplying natural gas to Germany and Western Europe at a price cheap enough for Germany to resell the excess to other European countries at a profit.

Germany's industry, and European homes and businesses enjoyed a constant supply of energy at affordable prices.

Washington never liked this arrangement, and by September 2021, as the construction of the second pair of pipelines - Nord Stream 2 - was completed, which would double the amount of cheap gas available to Germany and Western Europe, U.S. hostility towards the supply reached a climax.