Russia Duty Prime Minister says Nord Pipeline can be repaired. Jean-François Ribet, of the Monaco-based oil and gas pipeline repair company 3X Engineering, explains how.
Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak said that Russia may be able to fix the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines.
The process would be time-consuming and costly.
“There are technical possibilities to restore the infrastructure, it requires time and appropriate funds. I am sure that appropriate opportunities will be found,” he said on Russia 1 TV on Sunday, 2 October.
According to the official, however, the first step should be to determine who is behind the incident.
“As of today, we proceed from the fact that it is necessary, first of all, to figure out who did it, and we are sure that certain countries, which had expressed their positions before, were interested in it. Both the US and Ukraine, as well as Poland at one time said that this infrastructure is not going to work, that they will do everything to make sure of it, so, of course, it is necessary to seriously look into it,” Novak stated.
Citing German security services, Der Tagesspiegel newspaper earlier reported that the damaged routes could be permanently out of use if they are not repaired quickly, as salt water could cause corrosion.
The incident is widely considered to be the result of sabotage. Russia has called it a terrorist attack. While those behind it have not yet been identified, Moscow has blamed the US.
Source: Big News Network via RT – Nord Stream pipelines can be restored – Moscow
“Such an accident has never happened before. Of course, there are technical possibilities to restore the infrastructure, but this requires time and adequate funds. I am sure that we will find the necessary possibilities,” Novak said. “Today, our first thing is to find out who did this, and we are sure that certain countries that have expressed their views before have an interest in this. Both the United States and Ukraine and Poland have said before that this is infrastructure will not work and that they will do everything for this, so of course this must be seriously clarified,” he added.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister: Nord Stream pipelines can be repaire
Here’s how the Nord Stream gas pipelines could be fixed
by Drew Simpson, Seminole News
Once investigators can safely get hands on, the tricky work of triaging the problems and finding solutions begins. “You assess: ‘Okay, what is the state of the pipe? What are the damages?’” says Jean-François Ribet of the Monaco-based oil and gas pipeline repair company 3X Engineering, which has previously repaired pipelines in Yemen that have been sabotaged by the likes of Al-Qaeda. That assessment can be done using an inspection robot, a remotely operated vehicle, or specialized divers.
Sending divers to the site is challenging because of the depth of the pipeline: while the known leaks are concentrated in relatively shallow waters—around 50 meters deep—the majority of the pipeline lies 80 to 100 meters underwater. And all of it will need to be inspected for potential damage.
“We’ve done repairs at that depth, but you have to use saturation diving,” says Olivier Marin, R&D and technical manager at 3X Engineering. (In saturation diving, which is used for deep-sea conditions, divers remain at the extreme depth in a specialized habitat and undergo a single decompression once the operation is over.) “You can maybe do 10 hours, but you will have to stay for one month in a hyperbaric chamber,” he says.
The repairs themselves would not be easy. There are a number of options, says Ribet. The first is to replace the damaged sections of the pipe in their totality—though that’s the costliest. “You need the same diameter, the same kind of steel grade, and so on,” he says. And you need to bring shipborne cranes that are strong enough to lift the heavy pipe segments out of the water.
The second repair option would be to install a clamp that covers the damaged sections of the pipe, essentially patching the ruptured areas. However, with an internal diameter of 1.153 meters, the Nord Stream pipelines would require huge clamps, as well as the temporary installation of an underwater caisson, a watertight chamber that would encase the section of pipeline so that engineers could work within it.
Marin believes this would be “the easiest solution.” However, he adds, it would take months to procure a clamp big enough to encase the pipeline. This method also won’t work if there turns out to be extensive damage, because it’s not feasible to build clamps big enough to cover significant holes. A third option is a composite repair that mixes the two methods: replace the worst-damaged elements of the pipeline, and clamp those that are less affected.
Ribet suggests one potentially less likely fourth option: building and installing a new pipeline section that could bypass the damaged sections, which would be left in place. Russian analysts also note that one of Nord Stream’s four individual pipelines appears not to have been affected, meaning it could continue to deliver gas, albeit at a lower rate.
Source: Seminole Press – Here’s how the Nord Stream gas pipelines could be fixed
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