Baltic Pipeline Faces a Minefield of Problems

When a Gazprom-led consortium begins laying the foundation for a major new pipeline to pump Russian gas under the Baltic Sea directly to Western Europe, it is likely to run into problems -- thousands of them.

The North European Gas Pipeline, or Nord Stream, is due to snake along the seabed over an area covered with hundreds of thousands of unexploded mines and munitions dating as far back as World War I.

Officials and environmental groups in several of the countries that border the Baltic say construction of the 1,200-kilometer pipeline threatens to disturb the resting places of the deadly weapons, which include free-floating mines and decades-old canisters of mustard gas.

"There are major questions that have not yet been fully addressed by the consortium," Björn Skala, Sweden's ambassador for small arms, said by telephone from Stockholm. "The proof [of environmental safety] is not yet there."

Concerns over the Nord Stream pipeline have begun to split Europe, potentially pitting beneficiaries like Germany against those countries that say they will lose out from the project, namely new European Union members Poland and the Baltic states.

On Friday, the head of the European Investment Bank, Philippe Maystadt, said he would block loans to the project until all EU members had agreed to back the pipeline.

"There is clear opposition from several member states," Maystadt said. "As long as there is this opposition, we will be unable to finance the project." The EIB, the EU's soft-loan lending arm, was considering granting loans to cover up to 30 percent of the $6 billion project's costs.

If the first branch of the pipeline, running from the northern Russian port of Vyborg to Greifswald in Germany, comes online as planned in 2010, Europe would no longer be a casualty in Russia's pricing spats with countries like Ukraine or Belarus, through whose territory pipelines currently run.

Polish concerns center on historical fears as much as present-day worries that with a major pipeline bypassing its territory, its clout in convincing Europe to recognize fears over Russia's energy muscle could fade away.

Gazprom holds a 51 percent stake in the consortium, which was formally named Nord Stream last year. Germany's E.On and Wintershall, a wholly owned subsidiary of BASF, currently hold 24.5 percent each, but are each due to hand over 4.5 percent in the consortium to Dutch Gasunie under a deal inked last year.

After a Jan. 21 meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Vladimir Putin said pipelines that deliver oil and gas directly to customers were key to ensuring Russia's reliability as an energy supplier.

Polish Defense Minister Radoslaw Sikorski last year likened the project to the secret pact made between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany at the start of World War II to divide up Poland.

The country had hoped that instead of choosing the Baltic route, Gazprom would expand the Yamal-Europe pipeline that currently runs across its territory. To push their dissatisfaction at being left out, Poland and the Baltic states may now try to beat Russia at its own game, analysts said.

"These concerns over munitions are just politics," said Lev Fyodorov, the head of the Union for Chemical Safety in Moscow. "There are no scientific or ecological questions here."

That argument is eerily reminiscent of the one that the West leveled at the Kremlin last year, when steadily building pressure by environmental authorities was widely taken as a means of pushing Royal Dutch Shell and its Japanese partners into selling a controlling stake in Sakhalin-2 to Gazprom.

Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi agreed to hand over 51 percent of Sakhalin-2 to the state-run gas giant in December, but attempts by Poland and the Baltic countries will not be as successful, analysts said.

"The stark reality is that the Germans are dependent on Russian gas and will become more dependent in the medium term," said Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Alfa Bank. "They need the gas from this pipeline."

The most the Poles could hope for is causing minor irritations, like increased costs for the $6 billion project, he said.

EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs already warned last week that the 2010 start date was "optimistic."

Yet Gerhard Schröder, who controversially took the job of chairman of the Nord Stream shareholders' committee shortly after stepping down as German chancellor in 2005, said last week that he expected the project to stay on track.

"We plan to complete this project on time," Schröder said after meeting Piebalgs and other EU officials. "I believe this project is completely essential as far as gas supply security goes, not only for Germany but also for Europe."

Europe depends on Gazprom for 25 percent of its gas imports, a number due to rise as consumption on the continent grows over the next decade. Yet the dependence goes both ways, with Gazprom counting on Europe for the bulk of its revenues.

Of Gazprom's record $39 billion in export sales last year, $37.2 billion came from the 156 billion cubic meters Gazprom exported to countries outside the former Soviet Union.

The Nord Stream pipeline is due to give Gazprom an extra export capacity of 27.5 bcm per year and that amount is set to double by 2012, when a second arm is planned to come online.

With environmental concerns beginning to top the agenda of U.S. and European leaders alike, the complaints of the countries bordering the Baltic could get a hearing.

On Friday, officials from countries whose ecologies could potentially be affected by the Nord Stream pipeline are due to meet in Helsinki to discuss the consortium's preliminary environmental study.

Nord Stream insists it has carried out a thorough study of the munitions' location and will take care to avoid the sites where they lie. Around 40,000 tons of chemical munitions are estimated to have been dumped in the sea in 1947, according to the Helsinki Commission, an intergovernmental group that monitors the Baltic. Skala, the Swedish ambassador, said a further 100,000 mines are estimated to litter its shallow waters.

"In comparison with lots of other infrastructure projects, this one will have a more or less temporary impact," said Jens Muller, spokesman for the Nord Stream consortium based in Zug, Switzerland.

The consortium is due to submit an environmental impact assessment, or EIA, this summer for approval by nearly a dozen countries. Denmark, Finland, Germany, Russia and Sweden, as well as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, must greenlight the project before it can move to the construction stage.

In December, the foreign ministers of Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland and Sweden signed a joint document calling for an independent assessment by EU environmental authorities.

"The most important thing is that we haven't seen an EIA yet, but the routing has been decided," said Lasse Gustavvson, director of the World Wildlife Foundation's Stockholm-based Baltic EcoRegion Program. "If you're deciding on routing without knowing the landscape, this is not the best way to be careful, to put it simply."

Re http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,465373,00.html

English translation from http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/tr

DIRECT HIT ON U-864
The first underwater duel of history
Of
Markus Becker

It was the only mark that a submarine under water was torpediert by another: The firing of U-864 in February 1945 before Norway affected and leaves warfare in the depth crucially - to today traces.

James Launders had an order - and no notion, as he should fulfill him. Somewhere before the nose of its submarine the enemy pirschte by dark waters of the North Atlantic: the German U-864. In February 1945 Launders, had put commander of the British "Venturer" before Norway on the Lauer. , now finally, he could hear the Germans owing to a machine damage.

But U-864 did not want to emerge simply - and that would have been after level of knowledge at that time the condition for a torpedo attack. Launders decided to a daring maneuver. It entered as only duel of two dipped submarines naval warfare history.

The commander let pursue that zigzag driving U-864 over longer time, had however no exact range reading. Then it erspaehte by its periscope the Sehrohr of the Germans. Together with the noise detection Launders could locate the hostile ship sufficiently precisely - and instructed the attack: It let boat be turn and exactly on U-864 zuhalten. The "Venturer" fired a fan from four torpedoes from scarcely two kilometers distance. In the distance of in each case 17 seconds rushed the 40 knots snap projectiles out of the pipes.

So that the shot had at all a chance on success, Launders had to ahead-suspect the reaction of the German captain Ralf Reimar tungsten. And it should lie correctly: U-864 90 degrees, in order to offer to the opponent as small an attack region as possible, and dipped more deeply, in order to evade to the torpedoes. Tungsten could at the same time have brought so the tail of U-864 in position, in order to answer the fire - differently than the substantially smaller "Venturer" U-864 had torpedo pipes also in the tail. But the counter attack was missing.

Instead the German boat turned one of the British torpedoes exactly into the line of fire. The sprengkopf with 320 kilograms TNT met U-864 exactly in the center and tore it smoothly into two parts. They are today on the sea-bottom before the Norwegian island Fedje - with a high-poisonous freight of 61 tons mercury.

Attack with high risk

The duel in the Atlantic, which reconstructed MIRROR TV in a documentation (Sunday, 19,30 o'clock in the Second Channel of German Television), entered naval warfare history. "Launders has for the first time proven that it is possible in principle, a dipped submarine from another submarine to sink", says Jeff Tall, former commander of British nuclear-powered submarines and today director of the Royal Navy submarine of museum in the southEnglish Gosport. Launders ' maneuver was "outstanding" - both and maritime achievement and in its meaning for modern tactics. "with it it was briefly clear after the Second World War that a submarine is the best defense means against a submarine."

In order to fire torpedo goal-exactly, one must know course, speed and distance of the goal. "today one has for such a thing computers", says Tall. But "Jimmy", like the sailor its at that time only 25 years old colleagues calls, "had to compute the entire fire-control solution in the head".

Besides Launders ' maneuver was quite risky - not only because of the small hit chance. By the firing of the torpedoes the captain gave also the position of the "Venturer" to price and had in addition a full minute to remain there, until the last torpedo on the way was. The kreischenden propellers are to be heard under water in the best way and located thus. "U-864 could have shot its torpedoes exact in the direction, from which the attack came, says" Tall. If the Germans would fast have reacted, the duel for the "Venturer" would possibly badly have gone out. "Launders had to always assume U-864 was combatready and counted, says on an attack" Tall. "it the heart up to the neck must have struck."

And not only because of the danger for its boat and its crew, but also in view of the meaning of the goal: U-864 should bring scientists and valuable freight, among them designs and construction units of the revolutionary jet military plane to Me-262, to Japan, in order to help the imperial army in the Pacific war against the USA.

Mixture from ability and luck

Launders ' success was not only based on own being able, but also on a large portion luck and the fact that U-864 was "lausig led", as the British military historian Eric Grove means. "captain tungsten had much too long driven the periscope out." Thus it presented its boat "on the silver tray". Tungsten was an experienced teacher and with its 32 years of one of the older commanders of submarine in the final phase of the Second World War. But it had not led ever a submarine in the combat mission.

"perhaps that was the reason, why he did not answer, courage-measured the fire" to Tall, which kommandiert among other things the British nuclear-powered submarine "HMS Repulse". "after the naval warfare for many years with heavy losses there was no more many German commanders, the large instinct for leading a submarine possessed."

On board the "Venturer" the joy over the firing however only from short duration was - the British knew that removes some hundred meters straight 73 men drowned. "each submarine driver", says Tall, "has in such situations a deep sympathy."

Incalculable goal search torpedoes

A torpedo attack under water requires nowadays no more head computing arts. "for it one has in the meantime torpedoes, which find, say their goal independent" to historian Grove. The Germans would have already experimented 1936 with such technology. The result was the 1943 in service "falcon placed" and its successor "zaunkoenig": They had, like also today's torpedoes, an acoustic seeker.

The mechanism activated itself some hundred meters after the firing and looked for themselves then the loudest goal. Meetings should it above all fast driving hostile destroyers, which had easy play in the final phase of the war with the hunt for German submarines.

But the allied ones were fast with an effective counter measure to the hand: A noise buoy named "Foxer", which was dragged behind the ships, misled the German torpedoes effectively in. Occasionally also the attacking submarine was even the loudest object in the proximity. At least two German boats, U-377 and U-972, are their own goal search torpedoes to the victim please to be.

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