The damage was “caused by significant explosions,” Danish police stated after inspecting pipelines 1 and 2 in the Danish economic zone of the Baltic Sea.
A large tear and twisted metal can be seen on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which is 80 metres below the surface of the Baltic Sea, in footage that the Swedish tabloid Expressen has released.
The films, which were captured on Monday, according to Expressen, demonstrate how more than 50 metres (165 feet) of the pipeline are either gone or buried beneath the seabed, and lengthy tears can be seen on the seabed before the ruptured pipe.
According to Trond Larsen, a drone operator with the Norwegian company Blueye Robotics, “only an extraordinary force can bend metal that thick in the way we are seeing.”
You can also see “a very huge impact on the bottom around the pipe,” according to Larsen, who operated the underwater drone that recorded the footage.
Explosions under the Baltic Sea damaged the two Nord Stream pipelines at the end of September, resulting in four leaks.
The spills occurred in international seas, although two of them occurred in Denmark’s EEZ and two of them in Sweden’s.
The location had undergone an underwater assessment by Swedish officials, who said on October 6 that they had gathered “bits of evidence” and that the inspection supported their fears of possible sabotage.
Danish police and the intelligence agency PET announced on Tuesday that they had finished many checks of the leaks in the Danish zone.
In a statement, they stated that the damage was brought on by massive explosions and that Nord Stream 1 and 2 had sustained significant damage in the Danish Exclusive Economic Zone.
Danish police added that a combined investigative team will be formed with PET to carry out the inquiry, but that it was still too early to determine if Sweden and Germany could participate in international collaboration.
Geopolitical concerns have been centred on the pipelines that link Russia and Germany as Russia has curtailed gas supplies to Europe in what is believed to be retribution for Western sanctions over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
The pipes carried gas even though they weren’t in use until they were apparently sabotaged.
