London's Commercial Court ruled Nord Stream's pipeline losses excluded by its policy's war exclusion - without deciding who carried out the attacks.
On July 6, 2026, the court threw out Nord Stream AG's bid to recover for the explosions that wrecked its two NS1 Baltic Sea gas pipelines in September 2022. Dame Clare Moulder held the loss was excluded by the war exclusion in Nord Stream's offshore all-risks policy - and reached that result without deciding who was behind the attack.
The facts were mostly agreed. On or about September 26, 2022, both NS1 lines were damaged by explosions about 6.5 km apart and knocked out of service. Line 2 also carried a separate indentation, which the parties called the Dent. Russia's war in Ukraine had begun on or around February 24, 2022.
The insurers - Lloyd's Insurance Company S.A on the primary layer and Arch Insurance (EU) DAC on the excess - relied on Exclusion 2.i. It ruled out cover for "loss or damage directly or indirectly occasioned by, happening through, or in consequence of war."
Everything turned on how loose that causal link had to be. The court held the phrase set a very broad test, looser than proximate cause. War did not have to be the dominant cause; it only had to be a "significant" one - "noticeable" or "specifically accountable" as a contributing factor.
That standard is what let the court avoid the whodunit. The geopolitical evidence left a short list of possible culprits: Russia, the United States, Ukraine, or a Ukrainian sub-state group. For each, the judge asked whether the war would have been a significant cause if that actor did it. Each time, the answer was yes. On the court's reasoning, the invasion gave Ukraine a motive to strike back and removed its earlier fear of provoking Russia; gave Russia a reason to punish Germany for backing Kyiv, or to coerce it into changing course; and removed the escalation concern that had held the United States back. With every route leading to the war, the exclusion applied.
Underwriters will note the policy quirks. The all-risks cover was written on an amended WELCAR form - a wording built first and foremost for construction projects - with the Institute Clauses for Builders' Risks and the Institute War Clauses Builders' Risks incorporated into it. Nord Stream argued those clauses supplied the insuring clause and took priority over the war exclusion. The court disagreed: the builders' clauses were limited to property under construction and the war clauses to floating assets, so neither fitted an operating, fixed subsea pipeline. Expert evidence that the 2019 energy market generally confined war-risks cover to floating assets, and excluded fixed installations, told against Nord Stream too.
A fallback under General Condition 9, the "Deliberate Damage" clause, also failed. The court read it as limited to government action taken to prevent or mitigate a pollution hazard, so it did not restore cover.
The Dent got its own detailed treatment. Nord Stream suggested the indentation might have come from a dropped anchor rather than the attack. The court found an anchor drag was not a credible cause and an anchor drop highly unlikely, and concluded on the balance of probabilities that the Dent was caused by an explosion as part of the same sabotage - so it fell under the same exclusion.
As an alternative route, the court also considered whether the damage was "by or under the order of any government," and indicated that if any state actor was responsible the damage would count as caused "by the government." But that finding was secondary; the war exclusion did the work.
The outcome: no cover for either the ruptures or the Dent. Because the claim failed on liability, the court did not decide quantum.
The takeaway for claims professionals is blunt. A broadly worded war exclusion - "directly or indirectly occasioned by, happening through, or in consequence of" - can apply even where the attacker is never identified, and even where the insured property sits far from any battlefield. Insurers did not have to attribute the attack to a particular state, or prove any government order. They only had to show a significant causal link to the war.
