With Russia still showing every sign that it is prepared to tough out an even longer war in Ukraine, it will be doing everything it can to continue to use energy as a weapon against Europe — a weapon that is, of course, most effective in winter. Last year Europe was able to cope (although the process was more painful than is sometimes described) thanks to skillful planning, copious supplies of LNG (liquified natural gas) from the U.S. and Qatar, and an unusually warm winter (the second warmest on record).
This, from the London Times (October 10), therefore, makes for ominous reading:
Finland and Estonia have opened an investigation into the suspected sabotage of an undersea gas pipeline between the two countries that sprang a leak a year after the bombing of the Nord Stream gas route from Russia to Germany.
The Finnish authorities fear that the Balticconnector pipeline was attacked by a Russian vessel, a defence source told the Iltalehti newspaper. UK gas prices jumped more than 12 per cent after reports that the leak was not thought to be an accident. So far, however, there has been neither official confirmation of the report nor solid evidence to support it. . . .
The €300 million pipeline, which was established four years ago to connect the Finnish and Estonian gas grids under the Gulf of Finland, suffered an abrupt loss of pressure and was shut down in the early hours of Sunday.
The Finnish gas network operator said the only conceivable source of the problem was a hole in the pipe, which could be out of action for several months. . . .
Both countries are in theory well prepared for an outage. Finland has cut its already minor gas consumption by about 50 per cent since the Russian invasion of Ukraine last February, although it recently resumed the import of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Russia in small quantities.
In recent months Estonia is believed to have used the pipeline to import gas from a floating LNG terminal in Finnish waters. However, as an alternative it can draw on copious natural gas reserves at a storage facility in neighbouring Latvia, or a large land-based LNG terminal at Klaipeda in Lithuania.
The Financial Times (October 10):
Helsinki is investigating whether sabotage caused a leak in a Baltic Sea gas pipeline and a break in a data cable between Finland and Estonia.
Sauli Niinistö, Finland’s president, said the damage to the pipeline and cable was down to “external activity” but that the precise cause “is not yet known”. Foreign minister Elina Valtonen later on Tuesday said the two undersea links “have probably been damaged on purpose.” . . .
Norsar, the Norwegian seismological foundation, said on Tuesday it had detected a probable explosion in the Baltic Sea early on Sunday. Signals from stations in Finland indicated an event in the vicinity of gas pipelines off the coast of Estonia. It said further analysis of the data was ongoing.
TheDaily Telegraph (October 12):
Finland and Estonia are still trying to work out what caused the damage to the pipeline, with one theory being that a heavy anchor was dragged over it, either accidentally or deliberately.
“It can clearly be seen that these damages are caused by quite heavy force,” Hanno Pevkur, Estonia’s defence minister, told Reuters.
He said investigators were not ruling anything out, but possibilities included “mechanical impact or mechanical destruction” to the pipeline, which runs between Inkoo in Finland and Paldiski in Estonia.
The pipeline, which was encased in concrete for protection, looks like “someone tore it on the side”, according to Juri Saska, the commander of the Estonian navy.
“The concrete has broken, or peeled off, specifically at that point of injury,” he said.
It will take at least five months to repair the damaged pipeline, its Finnish and Estonian operators said on Wednesday.
Time will tell, I suppose, who was responsible.
Meanwhile, taking a break from its exhaustive investigation into the cause of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death, the Kremlin has said that the incident was “disturbing news” but is waiting to learn more. Hmm . . .
Whatever the explanation turns out to be, the damage to both the pipeline and the data cable are a reminder of Europe’s undersea vulnerability. The Baltic Sea is shallow, closely watched, and the distance between the Finnish and Estonian coasts is, in parts, not much more than 40 miles, and yet still no one can be sure (yet) of what happened. Now consider the pipelines running, say, under the North Sea.