The events of the past few days have been intense as it was discovered that an explosion caused a pressure loss in the gas pipeline between Estonia and Finland. Here’s what we know so far.
Here’s how it began: the Balticconnector gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia was shut down early on Sunday due to an unusual drop in pressure.
The damage to a gas pipeline and a telecommunications cable between Finland and Estonia “is probably the result of external activity,” Prime Minister Petteri Orpo (NCP) said at a press conference on Tuesday evening. President Sauli Niinistö said the same thing in an earlier press release.
“The damage to the underwater infrastructure has been taken seriously, and its causes have been investigated since Sunday,” President Niinistö said in the statement. “What specifically caused the damage is not yet known.”
Markku Hassinen, the deputy chief of the Border Guard, who spoke in the press conference on Tuesday, said that it was not a leak “but a clear damage.”
The damage to the gas pipeline in the Finnish Exclusive Economic Zone in the central Gulf of Finland, however, was not all that was detected. A fault was discovered in the telecommunications cable between the neighboring countries. The fault, according to authorities, is probably in Estonian territory.
The Gulf of Finland, according to the Border Guard, is very busy because of the commercial traffic. “There are many state ships of various kinds in the area,” Hassinen said.
Hassinen said the incident was worrying, but would not affect Finland’s gas supply or telecommunications connections.
“This is not an act that paralyzes us,” Orpo added.
Orpo said it was wise to be prepared for similar disruptions in the future.
“That is why we have increased our preparedness and are working together in a networked way, both within the country’s borders and with our foreign partners.”
Balticconnector started commercial operations in early January 2020. During the first month of operation, it supplied over a third of Finnish gas demand.
Today, the “gas accounts for 5% of Finland’s energy supply,” Prime Minister Orpo said at the press conference.
The prime minister and representatives of the Defence Forces stressed that the army is currently “in a state of normal readiness.”
But … “vigilance has been raised,” Orpo said.
The press conference itself had a wide representation of reporters and photographers of the Finnish army, all dressed in army greens, which made the air electric.
Yet, no blaming fingers were pointed toward any specific nation or perpetrator.
Estonian Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur told a news conference in Tallinn that the fault point of the damaged telecommunications cable has “very probably” been located, but final confirmation is still pending.
According to him, the damaged point is “most likely” located in the Estonian Exclusive Economic Zone at a depth of about 70 meters.
In a press release issued Tuesday night, NORSAR, an internationally recognized independent research foundation in Norway, noted they had observed a “likely explosion” in the Balticconnector gas pipeline between the two countries the day the leak began.
The press release stated that a seismic wave was observed in the vicinity of the pipeline at 01:20 on October 8. The observation was made by the seismic station located in Finland.
The possible blast took place about 20 kilometers north of the town of Paldiski, on the northwest coast of Estonia.
On Wednesday, a representative of NORSAR told Finnish news agency STT that the likely explosion was less than 100 kilos of TNT, meaning it was a fraction of the size of the explosions detected last year near the Nord Stream gas pipelines.
According to NORSAR, the seismic detection cannot be explained by an earthquake, for example, or by the pipeline being dragged along the seafloor.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Orpo did not want to assess which external party could be behind these damages.
Neither did any of the representatives of the military while most of the Finnish media did its all to push the button to spark some kind of headline for tomorrow’s papers. Ok … but … isn’t the topic itself not a major headline by itself? Do we need more?
It, however, became clear in the words of Timo Kilpeläinen, the crime inspector at the National Bureau of Investigation, that “the nature of the damage is such that it could not have been caused accidentally.” “The scale of the damage is such that it is an intentional act, which is currently under investigation,” Kilpeläinen said.
Unlike the state officials, many others have pointed the blaming finger at “our big brother from the East,” as one businessman who returned to Finland from Estonia on a cruise ferry Tuesday night put it. He was interviewed by the Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat.
Another passenger working in the tourism industry said, “On board, I am not concerned about safety. The gas pipeline is not on our route. It runs between Inko and Paldiski.”
People considered “experts on Russia,” such as Marko Eklund, a retired Finnish deputy defense attaché who worked in Moscow, and now works for the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE said, “In this situation, it is very difficult to see any actors other than Russia, because Russia’s rhetoric has been harsh toward Finland.”
“Russia would benefit a lot from this,” said Professor Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen of the University of Helsinki. Tynkkynen specializes in Russian environmental and energy policy.
“Russia’s main export is not raw materials, but fear. This is in line with the Russian strategy of creating a fear that any kind of infrastructure can be targeted. When there is no certainty about the perpetrator, it increases the fear factor in people’s minds,” Tynkkynen said.
Russian media, such as the daily newspaper Pravda, stated that “the explosion of gas pipelines could become the new normal.”
According to Pravda, although “Balticconnector is not large or important, the market reacted quickly and gas futures prices rose sharply. This offers speculators an opportunity to make money at low cost.”
Russia is likely to be blamed for the incident, Pravda continued while advising its readers that such allegations “are difficult to prove.”
In a press conference on Wednesday afternoon, representatives of the National Bureau of Investigation said that traces have been observed on the seabed near the Balticconnector gas pipeline leak. The investigation is now focusing on a technical examination of the damage site and the incident site, as well as on subsea events and maritime traffic at the time.
The examinations and investigations will take days.
