The energy crisis

Units of the British Navy were involved in a "terrorist attack", which destroyed the key Nord Stream gas pipelines, the Russian Defence Ministry alleged on Saturday.

Writing on its official Telegram channel, the ministry alleged that Royal Navy operatives “took part in planning, supporting and implementing” the plot to blow up the infrastructure in September. It did not provide any direct evidence to support its assertion.

The accusation follows a Russian Foreign Ministry claim that NATO conducted a military exercise during the summer, close to the location where the undersea explosions occurred.

The September incident put the pipelines, connecting Germany to Russia, out of commission. Western countries have blocked a transparent international investigation.

www.rt.com/russia/565577-nord-stream-uk-attack

The United Kingdom has rebuffed a Russian accusation that it orchestrated an attack on the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea. The statement came hours after Moscow claimed that the Royal Navy was involved in the explosions.

Writing on Twitter on Saturday, the UK Ministry of Defence claimed that Moscow “is resorting to peddling false claims of an epic scale” in an effort to detract the global community from “their disastrous handling of the illegal invasion of Ukraine.”

The ministry went on to denounce the accusation as an “invented story” which “says more about arguments going on inside the Russian Government than it does about the West.”

Meanwhile Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, has signaled that Moscow intends to draw the attention of global community and the UN Security Council to “a series of terrorist attacks against Russia in the Black and Baltic Seas” and to Britain’s involvement in the matter.

Earlier on Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry alleged that Royal Navy operatives “took part in planning, supporting and implementing” the plot to destroy the key Nord Stream gas pipelines. It did not provide any direct evidence to support its assertion.

The Russian Foreign Ministry earlier claimed that NATO conducted a military exercise during the summer which featured the intensive use of “deep-sea equipment’’ close to the location where the undersea explosions occurred.

The pipelines, which were built to deliver Russian natural gas directly to Germany, lost pressure abruptly on September 26, following a series of underwater explosions off the Danish island of Bornholm.

www.rt.com/news/565584-uk-nord-stream-attack

The US is no longer the leader in the civilian nuclear energy industry, having lost its place to Russia and China, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi has said.

Grossi made his comments while speaking at a conference held by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) think tank on Friday. CEIP President Mariano-Florentino Cuellar asked him whether the US civilian nuclear industry can regain prominence, considering that “the US is not the same economic player in commercial nuclear technology” as Russia and China.

“I think this is a challenge for America. It has traditionally been the leader, it lost this leadership,” Grossi said.

“But I heard the [US] secretary of energy say that we want to regain this leadership. Of course, you have to walk the walk,” he added. Grossi stated that Russia and China’s more “flexible” business models allow them to export nuclear technology abroad.

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At the same time, he expressed confidence that the US has the technological capacity to strengthen its domestic nuclear industry and expand into foreign markets.

“I see interesting decisions being taken to boost the domestic nuclear industry, which is, of course, indispensable internally because of the energy situation here but also internationally,” he said.

US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said last month that the government under President Joe Biden is “committed to re-establishing the United States as a leader in nuclear energy, non-proliferation, and climate action.”

According to a July report by S&P Global Commodity Insights, the share of nuclear power generation output in the US and Europe is expected to decrease from roughly 20% to 15% by 2035, while China plans to double its output to almost 10%.

www.rt.com/news/565592-us-not-nuclear-leader

Germany’s largest gas importer Uniper on Thursday reported a staggering €40 billion ($39 billion) net loss through September, citing diminishing supplies from Russia as the major reason.

“Reduced Russian gas deliveries have a significant adverse impact on Uniper’s results in the first nine months of 2022… The IFRS-net loss of around €40 billion contains roughly €10 billion of realized costs for replacement volumes, and roughly €31 billion of anticipated future losses from valuation effects on derivatives and provision built-ups related to the Russian gas curtailments as of September 30, 2022,” the company said in a press release on its website.

The company noted that Russian gas supplies to the company ceased completely in the third quarter, forcing it to purchase gas on the spot market at significantly higher prices.

“Uniper has for some time been procuring gas at significantly higher prices and, as is well known, has thus recorded considerable losses because the replacement costs of procuring new gas aren’t being passed through to consumers,” the company’s CFO Tiina Tuomela said in a statement commenting on the report, as cited by Bloomberg.

Uniper is one of the EU energy companies hardest hit by reduced energy supplies from Russia. It is set to receive a €30 billion aid package by the end of the year from the German government, which will result in the energy giant being nationalized. Berlin fears that if the company fails to stay afloat it could have a domino effect on the country’s energy sector.

According to Reuters, Uniper’s reported net loss is among the biggest in Germany’s corporate history.

www.rt.com/business/565847-uniper-loss-russian-gas