Nord Stream pipelines sabotaged
On September 26, 2022, four explosions seven months into the Russia-Ukraine war ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea — pipelines that had carried roughly a third of European gas consumption before the war. The destruction was not formally attributed by any government for years; multiple states have been alleged or speculated. The strategic effect was clear regardless: the most expensive pieces of European-Russian energy infrastructure ever built were physically destroyed, eliminating any short-term path back to pre-war energy interdependence between Europe and Russia. Energy infrastructure had become a target rather than a constraint.
Nord Stream 2 had been completed in 2021 but never put into commercial operation — Germany suspended its certification two days before Russia invaded Ukraine. Its destruction in September 2022 thus ended a project that had already been politically dead for seven months, but the symbolism of physically blowing up the most contested piece of European energy infrastructure marked a clear point of no return.
05 · The Transition
Three energy revolutions are running simultaneously. American shale fracking has made the U.S. the world's largest oil and gas producer for the first time since 1973. Solar and battery costs have collapsed by 80 to 90 percent in fifteen years, with China dominating both production and the rare-earth supply chain. And weaponized energy — Russia's gas cuts to Europe, Western sanctions on Russian oil, the price-cap mechanism, the Nord Stream sabotage — has demonstrated that the petrodollar system can be unwound, in pieces, in months. The wealth ranking of the next era is being decided right now, and not all of the candidates know they're competing.
Read the full era →- 2008 — 2014U.S. shale oil revolution
- Nov 27, 2014Saudi price war against shale
- 2010 — 2024Solar electricity becomes the cheapest power
- 2017 — presentCobalt and lithium become geopolitical
- Apr 20, 2020Oil futures go negative
- Dec 5, 2022First fusion ignition at NIF
- Aug 16, 2022Inflation Reduction Act passed