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Notes -
The hydrate plug theory is basically that leaving a pipe non-operational for a long time and then trying to unilaterally unplug it was rolling the dice on spectacular failure.
But was NS II ever operational? I guess there was some gas in it (probably to prevent contamination/corrosion) but AFAIK no production pumping had ever been done on it. (and nobody was trying to make it otherwise at the time, so it's not clear why they'd be unplugging it at that moment either)
The pipe was pressurised with gas (which was almost certainly very slushy in parts). If the Russians wanted to make sure that the pipe was in a ready-to-supply state (or if some gazprom official had been making representations this had been the case), plugs are cleared through careful depressurisation and slowly melting them. Depressuring unilaterally too quickly could create a pressure gradient over any hydrate plugs and accelerate them off down the pipe.
Why would it be slushy? It's dried methane, already processed for consumption I think -- and here's the P-T curve for hydrate formation, which seems to indicate that you can keep gas in the pipe indefinitely with no issues so long as you don't ramp up to higher pressures. Which I'm not sure why you would do if you were forbidden from pumping gas at the time.
A lot of theories around this war seem to require every Russian to be a moron -- which is almost certainly wrong, and in any case a canonical example of underestimating your enemy.
Per my other comment, I'd expect the pipes on the seafloor to be at >10,000 kPa at <5C, sufficient for hydrate formation.
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