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Comment by Joeri | Hacker News Reader

Gas prices were dropping, half what they were at the peak. Putin wants gas prices to remain high to punish the EU and increase his own revenues. Since this incident they’re climbing back up. There are other ways for russia to export the gas than nordstream 1. He may think he can force an opening of nordstream 2. Putin has made so many errors in judgment that no strategy is too insane to be considered reasonable in his mind.

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Nordstream 2 is also hit. Otherwise an interesting thought.

Yamal/Brotherhood are fine, so this doesn't really change anything.

I assume the Russians have some sort of valve on their end of the pipe that they could switch off. That would be cheaper than blowing the pipe up, and also givem more negotiating leverage.

It probably wasn't them.

Yep, and putin has said that he'll close the valve (well, not him personally).

EU gets cold, and the only way to heat up is to sit down with putin and make some sort of an agreement.

Now, someone destroyed the pipeline, and there's no incentive for EU and putin to make any negotiations, since the pipeline won't be fixed before the winter is over.

But the USA will get to sell overpriced gas to EU

But Northstream 2 ist also damaged which should stand in the way of opening, especially as these events are unlikely to be anything but deliberate.

I'd imagine the Russian would have less permanent ways of restricting gas flow.

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