EU Finland: Baltic Sea gas pipeline damage probably from ‘external activity’

Finland: Baltic Sea gas pipeline damage probably from ‘external activity’
The Washington Post (archive.ph)
By Emily Rauhala
2023-10-10 14:04:59GMT


A compression station of the Balticconnector marine gas pipeline is pictured in Inkoo, Finland. (Lehtikuva/Mikko Stig/via REUTERS)

BRUSSELS — Damage to a gas pipeline and a communications cable in the Baltic Sea was probably caused by “external activity,” Finland’s president said Tuesday.

The Balticconnector gas pipeline, which runs between Finland and Estonia, was shut down early Sunday due to an unusual drop in pressure.

“It is likely that the damage to both the gas pipe and the communication cable is the result of external activity,” Finland’s President Sauli Niinistö said in a statement published Tuesday. “The cause of the damage is not yet clear, the investigation continues in cooperation between Finland and Estonia.”

Niinistö said his country, which recently joined NATO, was in “constant contact with our allies and partners.”

“I had a conversation with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg today,” he said. “NATO is ready to assist in investigations.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg confirmed he had been in touch with Finland’s president. “NATO is sharing information & stands ready to support Allies concerned,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo is expected to provide more details in a news conference Tuesday.

Gasgrid Finland and Elering, the Finnish and Estonian gas system operators, announced the unusual drop in pipeline pressure on Sunday. The relevant section of pipeline was identified, valves were shut, and the leak was contained, according to Gasgrid.

In a press release published Tuesday, the company said is has started its investigation into what happened and how long it might take to repair the damage. The company and Finnish officials have stressed that Finland’s gas supply is safe.

The incident, which is still being investigated, comes more than a year after a series of underwater explosions damaged the Nord Stream pipelines built to carry natural gas from Russia to Europe.

Those explosions happened in the run-up to European winter and heightened fears of a destabilizing European gas crisis.

Though the impact on Europe was limited, the question of who was responsible has lingered, despite a series of investigations.

U.S. and European officials initially pointed to Russia. But various investigations since have challenged the easy assumption that Moscow was to blame.

 

[Changed later]

I'm sure it's just a Coincidence.

 

[Your Starter for 10]

Literally as soon as they started making black mermaids.

 

[sum ting wong]

We'll never get a real answer as to who did it but this will be blamed on Russia, the US, NATO, MAGA, the Jews, Hamas, and probably aliens just in case.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

Finngolian man got drunk and stabbed the pipeline with his knife. It happens, pipeline might have been accosting him in some way.

 

[TheDarknessGrows]

This will happen more often.

Just be glad we have satellites now.

 

[KittyGremlin]

We'll never get a real answer as to who did it but this will be blamed on Russia, the US, NATO, MAGA, the Jews, Hamas, and probably aliens just in case.

True, but I'm not sure who really benefits here. The media spectacle is useless because those regions are very pro-Ukraine already. Russia damaging it is odd, because if they wanted to cut off gas to apply diplomatic pressure, why not go all the way and fully destroy it? Did they simply fuck it up?

All of this gets my mind jogging.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

True, but I'm not sure who really benefits here. The media spectacle is useless because those regions are very pro-Ukraine already. Russia damaging it is odd, because if they wanted to cut off gas to apply diplomatic pressure, why not go all the way and fully destroy it? Did they simply fuck it up?

All of this gets my mind jogging.

Who supplies Europe with oil and gas? America
Who benefits? America.

 

[KittyGremlin]

Who supplies Europe with oil and gas? America
Who benefits? America.

Russian gas doesn't flow between Estonia and Finland AFAIK

 

[boofit]

Russian gas doesn't flow between Estonia and Finland AFAIK

I don't know about that but they still need stuff to burn and petrodollar sure needs the boost Sam needs sheep

 

[KittyGremlin]

I don't know about that but they still need stuff to burn and petrodollar sure needs the boost

Is there a choice though? If I'm being real here, as shady as the US can be it is a better option than buying from Russia, at least for the time being. Having been ruled by those communist apes does instill some pragmatic thinking.

 

[boofit]

Is there a choice though? If I'm being real here, as shady as the US can be it is a better option than buying from Russia, at least for the time being. Having been ruled by those communist apes does instill some pragmatic thinking.

eh tables have turned, some time ago. Russia don't make you do their bidding, take immigrants and gay media shit just for the privilege of being in the club plus their stuff is way cheaper and they reliably deliver. Sam's a commie now. You can't fucking win the Geo buddy game if you are not energy dense yourself.

 

[KittyGremlin]

eh tables have turned, some time ago. Russia don't make you do their bidding, take immigrants and gay media shit just for the privilege of being in the club plus their stuff is way cheaper and they reliably deliver. Sam's a commie now. You can't fucking win the Geo buddy game if you are not energy dense yourself.

Spoiler: sperging about baltic politics

Look at Belarus, it's practically an extension of Russia now. As for immigrants and gay shit? We'll see. So far not much of it here. We take in very few immigrants and those we do take in tend to want to run anyway. Because, you know, we treat them like temporary residents that they should be rather than cut them loose against the civil population. EU bitched about it for some time but they seem to have shut up about it now that Ukraine war is a thing and they need us for PR.

As for gay shit, Estonia is a bit of an exception because they have their Scandinavian LARP going on so they'll take the LGBTBBQ shit all day and ask for a desert after. I don't know about Latvia, but we can't have gay marriage because in our constitution it was clearly written that marriage is between a man and a woman. Amending that is even more complicated here than anywhere else due to historical reasons and the best they can hope for in the near future is a civil union. There is some drama going on about a new sex ed programme that includes some troonshit but that's being pushed back against heavily and has no hope of passing (pun semi intended).

That being said, a small nation can't take long term security for granted and I'm under no delusion about it. EU and the US may become a liability in the future.

 

[Kalsarikännit]

Glad there was no lasting damage, I’ll chalk it up to fearmongering, and we will never have a definite explanation.

 

[Kendall Motor Oil]

There used to be issues with idiots in the Mediterranean dragging their anchors over fiber lines. I wonder if something like that caused it.

 

[clipartfan92]

NATO allies send planes and ships to Baltic Sea following suspected sabotage
Stars and Stripes (archive.ph)
By John Vandiver
2023-10-20

STUTTGART, Germany — Drones, reconnaissance planes and ships have been dispatched to the Baltic Sea, a move that comes in response to recently discovered damage to critical undersea infrastructure, NATO said this week.

“NATO will continue to adapt its maritime posture in the Baltic Sea and will take all necessary steps to keep allies safe,” NATO spokesman Dylan White said Thursday in a statement.

The vulnerability of undersea gas pipelines and communication cables to sabotage is a growing NATO concern. Alliance officials have warned that Russia could target such infrastructure to gain leverage against allied countries providing security assistance to Ukraine.

On Tuesday, those concerns were brought into focus when Sweden reported partial damage to an undersea telecommunications cable connected to Estonia. Authorities suspect the damage occurred at the same time an undersea gas pipeline and telecommunications cable running from Finland to Estonia was found to be damaged last week.

The incidents remain under investigation and senior NATO officials have refrained from blaming Russia so far.

“If it is proven to be a deliberate attack on NATO-critical infrastructure, then this will be, of course, serious, but it will also be met by a united and determined response,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said last week during a meeting of allied defense ministers.

NATO said it will more closely monitor an area that already had been under surveillance since the 2022 sabotage of Nord Stream 1, a Baltic Sea pipeline that delivered natural gas from Russia to Germany.

Maritime patrol aircraft, NATO AWACS planes, drones and a fleet of four minehunter vessels are part of the enhanced surveillance effort.

“We continue to monitor the situation closely, and we remain in close contact with our allies Estonia and Finland, and our partner Sweden,” White said.

 

[clipartfan92]

The damage to a Baltic undersea cable was 'purposeful,' Swedish leader says but gives no details
Associated Press (archive.ph)
By Associated Press Staff
2023-10-24 13:57:35GMT

STOCKHOLM (AP) — The damage to a telecommunications cable running under the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Estonia was “purposeful,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Tuesday but declined to be drawn on the details.

“We will not be more precise than that as of today,” Kristersson said at a press conference, after Swedish divers had investigated the seabed.

A spokesman for the Swedish Navy, Jimmie Adamsson, told Swedish public broadcaster SVT that “we see seabed tracks nearby, but we don’t know if it’s deliberate or an accident.”

On Oct. 17, Sweden reported damage to an undersea telecommunications cable that authorities believe occurred at the same time as damage to an undersea gas pipeline and telecom cable between Finland and Estonia. Swedish Civil Defense Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin said at the time that the cause of the damage was unclear, adding that it was “not a total cable break” but “a partial damage.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told the press conference Tuesday with Kristersson that member countries have “tens of thousands of kilometers of internet cables, of gas pipelines over power cables, all the oil pipelines crossing the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and of course, these types of undersea critical infrastructure is vulnerable.”

The military alliance was working “closely with the private sector,” Stoltenberg said, because “most of this critical infrastructure is owned by private companies, operated by private companies.”

In June, NATO launched a new center for protecting undersea pipelines and cables following the still-unsolved apparent attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea in early 2022, amid concern Russia is mapping vital Western infrastructure for energy and the internet in waters around Europe.

On Oct. 8, Finnish and Estonian gas system operators said they noted an unusual drop in pressure in the Balticconnector pipeline — between Estonia and Finland — after which they shut down the gas flow. Two days later, the Finnish government said there was damage both to the gas pipeline and to a telecommunications cable between the two NATO countries.

“We haven’t any final conclusion on or assessment about exactly who is behind (the damage on the Sweden-Estonia cable) or whether this was intentional or not. But the NATO, together with Finland, Estonia and Sweden, are working to establish the facts. Before they are established, I’m not going to (go into) any details,” Stoltenberg said.

Estonia has said that the disruption to the Swedish-owned cable was just off the northern part of the Baltic country.

Last week, Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation - a unit of Finnish police known by its acronym NBI - said the damage on the Balticconnector pipeline in the Gulf of Finland had been caused by “an external mechanical force” and not by an explosion.

NBI said it has now focused its investigation on checking the role of a Hong Kong-flagged container vessel, saying its movements coincided with the pipeline damage. The agency said it was also probing “an extremely heavy object” that was found on the seabed.

 

[VargReallyDidNothingWrong]

The agency said it was also probing “an extremely heavy object” that was found on the seabed.

Hahaha the agency is fucking OP's mom

 

[pikachudidnothingwrong]

Everyone paying attention to the ME while this is the story with maybe the potential to kick off something much more dangerous.

 

[clipartfan92]

Finland says gas pipeline likely broken by ship dragging anchor
Reuters (archive.ph)
By Essi Lehto
2023-10-24 15:44:26GMT


Finnish Border Guard's photo of a Hong Kong registered cargo ship 'Newnew Polar Bear', which was spotted moving close to the Balticconnector gas line, during the joint press conference of the investigation of the possible attack on the Balticconnector gas line on 8th Oct., 2023 between Finland and Estonia at the headquarters of the National Bureau of Investigation in Vantaa, Finland, 24 October 2023. Lehtikuva/HEIKKI SAUKKOMAA via REUTERS

Finnish Border Guard's photo of an anchor shown during the joint press conference of the investigation of the possible attack on the Balticconnector gas line on 8th Oct., 2023 between Finland and Estonia at the headquarters of the National Bureau of Investigation in Vantaa, Finland, 24 October 2023. Lehtikuva/HEIKKI SAUKKOMAA via REUTERS

HELSINKI, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Damage to a Baltic Sea gas pipeline earlier this month is believed to have been caused by a ship dragging a large anchor along the seabed, but it was too early to tell if this was an accident or a deliberate act, Finnish police said on Tuesday.

Investigators said they had now retrieved a lost anchor from the seabed location where the pipeline ruptured on Oct. 8, and were investigating whether it belonged to a Chinese container vessel.

Police have previously said damage to the Balticconnector subsea gas pipeline and two Baltic Sea telecoms cables was cause by external mechanical force and were investigating whether this was a case of sabotage or caused by accident.

Broad drag marks were seen on the seabed leading up to where the pipeline was broken, and the anchor was lying immediately after the damage spot. A narrower path was seen on the seabed stretching onwards for dozens of miles, police said.

A piece of the anchor, one of its two spikes, had broken off, they added.
"The next questions are about whether it was intentional, negligence, poor seamanship, and that's where we get into whether there could be a motive for what's going on," National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) chief Robin Lardot told a press conference.

"But it's too early to answer that at this stage," he added.

The NBI on Friday said they were focusing their probe on the Chinese NewNew Polar Bear container vessel that had travelled above the pipeline and the cables at the time of the damage.

The NBI on Tuesday said they had established that the NewNew Polar Bear was in fact missing one of its front anchors, and said they had tried unsuccessfully to contact the ship to ask whether this was the one retrieved in the Gulf of Finland.

China called on Monday for an "objective, fair and professional" investigation into the pipeline damage.

The incident cut pipeline gas supplies to Finland, although the country expects to manage with imports of liquefied natural gas via ship deliveries to its Inkoo port.

As a result of the damage, NATO has stepped up patrols in the Baltic Sea.

In September 2022, the larger Nord Stream pipelines connecting Germany and Russia were damaged by explosions that authorities have said were deliberate acts of sabotage, although it is still unclear who was behind the attack.