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Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation said on October 11 that it had launched an investigation into “possibly intentional damaging” of a Baltic Sea gas pipeline running between Finland and Estonia.
The statement follows an announcement by Finnish authorities earlier this week that the damage to the Balticconnector pipeline discovered over the weekend was likely the “result of external activity.”
The National Bureau of Investigation said that it started gathering evidence from the point of the gas leak and its surroundings on October 10, and the purpose is to find out “what kind of possible external activity caused the damage and whether it was intentional damage,” it said in a statement, adding that the investigation is in its initial stage.
Estonian authorities are cooperating with the investigation, and President Alar Karis said earlier on October 11 that Estonia is demanding answers.
“We know that the cause is not nature, but probably human activity. Who, why and how? Negligence or intent? These questions have yet to be answered,” Karis wrote in a post on Facebook.
The incident occurred a little over a year after the larger Nord Stream gas pipelines, a major conduit for Russian natural gas exports to Western Europe, were damaged by explosions. Denmark, Sweden, and Germany opened probes into the incident, which was deemed to be sabotage. The case remains unsolved.
Reuters quoted Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur as saying “it can clearly be seen” that the subsea gas pipeline and a telecommunications cable running parallel to it were damaged by “external activity” and the damage was “caused by quite heavy force.”
Investigators are not ruling out anything at this stage, he added.
“So what it is exactly, we have to specify yet, but at the moment it rather seems that it had been mechanical impact or mechanical destruction,” he said.
There has been little comment about the telecommunications cable and any fallout from the damage. The cable is in Estonia’s exclusive economic zone, and Estonian authorities are leading the investigation into its damage.
The incident was first noticed on October 8 when Finnish and Estonian gas system operators noticed an unusual drop in pressure in the Balticconnector pipeline, after which they shut down the gas flow.
The repair will take at least five months, and a restart of gas transport will at the earliest happen in April of 2024, Finland and Estonia’s gas operators said on October 11.
Finnish authorities said earlier that they had identified the location of the outage in the 77-kilometer pipeline, but the cause of the damage was not yet clear and the investigation was continuing.
Estonian Navy Commander Juri Saska said the pipeline, which was encrusted in concrete for protection, looks like “someone tore it on the side.”
“The concrete has broken, or peeled off, specifically at that point of injury,” Saska told Estonian public broadcaster ERR.
Afterward, the Norwegian seismological institute (NORSAR) said it detected “a probable explosion” on October 8 in the Baltic Sea between Finland and Estonia, both NATO member states, where the gas pipeline leak was later detected.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that if the damage was proven to be due to an attack, it would be met by a “united and determined” response.
“If it is proven to be an attack on NATO critical infrastructure…it will be met by a united and determined response from NATO,” he said on October 11 before a meeting of alliance defense ministers in Brussels.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described news of damage to the Balticconnector as “disturbing” and said Russia was awaiting further information on the incident.
The Balticconnector pipeline runs across the Gulf of Finland from the Finnish town of Inkoo to the Estonian port of Paldiski. It is bi-directional, transferring natural gas between Finland and Estonia depending on demand and supply.
Commissioned in 2019, the Balticconnector has been the only gas import channel to Finland apart from liquefied natural gas (LNG) since Russian imports were halted in May 2022 following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russia stopped supplying gas after Finland refused to pay in rubles, a condition imposed on “unfriendly countries” — including European Union member states — as a way to sidestep Western financial sanctions against Russia’s central bank.
Most of the gas that was flowing in the Balticconnector pipeline before it was closed on October 8 was going from Finland to Estonia from which it was forwarded to Latvia, Estonia’s gas system operator Elering said.
Estonian consumers have been receiving gas from Latvia since the shutdown of the pipeline, Elering said.
Finnish gas operator Gasgrid said the Finnish gas system is stable and the supply of gas has been secured through a floating LNG terminal at Inkoo.
With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP
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