Baltic Sea – At about 2 o’clock on Sunday 8 October, the Finnish operating company of the Balticconnector, Gasgrid Finland, and its Estonian partner Elering noticed a sudden fall of the pressure in this underwater bi-directional natural gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia through the Gulf of Finland. Since then the pipeline has been shut down and an investigation is underway, while the repairs are expected to take “at least five months”. A telecoms cable near the pipeline was also damaged.

Finland’s only direct link to the European gas network

The Balticconnector is connecting the Finnisch and the Estonian gas networks between the city of Ingå (Inkoo) at the southern coast of Finland and the Estonian port of Paldiski. Its construction began in June 2018 and the commercial operations started in January 2020. This 151 km long pipeline has an annual capacity of 2.6 billion cubic metres, and before the incident of the 8 October, it was transporting 30 GWh/day from Finland to Estonia. It is Finland’s only direct link to the wider European Union’s gas network as well as Finland’s only natural gas import channel since Russian imports were halted in May 2022.

“The damage has been caused by an external mechanical force”

According the Norway’s seismological institute, Norsar, quoted by the BBC, the damage might have been caused by a “probable explosion” that, following the measures noticed, should have been “far smaller than the explosions that targeted the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022”. However, the Finnish Prime minister Petteri Orpo declared on 10 October that there were “no indications” of an explosion and that “the discovered damage could not have been caused by normal use of the pipeline or pressure fluctuations.”

On 11 October, Risto Lohi of the Finnish national bureau of investigation, declared that “the investigation has confirmed that the damage has been caused by an external mechanical force, and based on current knowledge there is no reason to believe the damage has been caused by an explosion.”

A Chinese vessel and a Russian cargo ship were detected near the site

On his part, the secretary general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, stated that if the damage to the Balticconnector was “proven to be an attack on NATO critical infrastructure … it will be met by a united and determined response from NATO,” while some media speculated that the incident might have been caused by Russia, and indeed, as evoked by The Guardian, the “Russian hydrographic survey vessel, Sibiryakov, was detected in the Gulf of Finland near the pipeline”.

In the meantime, the Finnish authorities suspect that a Chinese vessel was involved in the incident. According to the Finnish police, “the movements of the Hong Kong-flagged vessel Newnew Polar Bear coincide with the time and place where the pipeline was damaged.” Further, Risto Lohi of the Finnish national bureau of investigation mentioned that “An enormous recently formed mass of earth, probably containing an extremely heavy object, has been discovered on the seabed.” However, the Russian lead has not been completely ruled out yet, as the Russian nuclear-powered cargo ship Sevmorput was also in the vicinity. On 20 October, the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated having asked China and Russia for further information about both those vessels. As a consequence of this incident, Lithuania has decided to strengthen the underwater control of its LNG terminal.