Baltic Sea Pipeline Keeps Losing Friends

Since its inception, Nord Stream -- the company planning to build a natural gas pipeline underneath the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany -- has shown a remarkable inability to make friends. Poland is furious about being bypassed. Estonia and Lithuania are both concerned about the security of their energy supply. And Sweden has even voiced concern that the pipeline might give the Russian navy an excuse to patrol Baltic Sea waters.

But a brouhaha this weekend shows that the pipeline consortium, with former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder sitting on the board of directors, hasn't gotten much better when it comes to public relations. A report in SPIEGEL magazine on Saturday revealed that the company was planning on rinsing out the pipeline with 2.3 billion liters of a solution containing glutaraldehyde, a hazardous chemical often used as an anti-bacterial. The option called for the solution to be pumped directly into the already polluted Baltic Sea when the procedure was finished.