At the time of the explosion, the pipeline was not delivering any gas; Russia never turned the pipeline back on after they shutdown for summer maintenance.
At the time of the attack, Russia had spent months giving multiple fake excuses as to why they weren’t sending gas through the pipeline[1]. Interesting bit:
> Russian officials and Gazprom representatives continue to insist that Germany could easily solve the problem by simply agreeing to certify the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and accept deliveries via it.
What’s interesting is that Nord Stream 2 wasn’t needed when Russia first started saying that certifying it would bring gas back, and European governments said as much. After the explosion, however, the previous Russian claim became a reality, and Putin pushed for certifying Nord Stream 2 as a solution[2].
It’s still unclear who was responsible for the attack, but the claims that Russia would have no motive ignore what was actually happen in the lead up to the explosion.
75-230 kt is a lot from a single event, but trivial compared to some persistent LNG leaks. It’s 0.002% to 0.004% of the current methane in the atmosphere diminishing to half that in 6–8 years, which again is a lot from a single event but not particularly relevant long term.
One Russian mine was leaking ~400kt every 6 months and they didn’t fix it just cut that down to 1/3.
