Nord Stream is the name for 2 pairs of offshore natural gas pipelines in Europe that runs under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany. It includes the Nord Stream 1 pipeline running from Vyborg in northwestern Russia, near Finland, and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline running from Ust-Luga in northwestern Russia near Estonia.
What it means is that someone has sabotaged gas into Europe/Germany just in time for winter. Could be anybody. Really. Anyone in the world including Russia/India/China could be responsible. There is no way to know for sure.
Europe is all in for a very hard winter.
Or it could be an effect of typically shoddy Russian workmanship. Their inland oil pipelines, according to a directional driller I know who worked there, leaked like soaker hoses.
Either way, a gas boil like that is a hazard to navigation (any vessel who runs across that will sink because they aren't displacing water, but water charged with undisolved bubbles--so they will go down, if some spark doesn't light the thing up.
For the 'greenhouse gas methane emissions' crowd, it is an environmental disaster, but in the end, it will have to be fixed for the line to stay in use, which means the line will have to be shut down. Not sure of the water depth, but welders with a deep diving rating (Mixed gas,
saturation diving ), or submersibles may be needed to fix it.
