Here's what was said at the official press conference.
Prime minister says it is considered not possible to be a normal fault, but that it is "because of external influence". No effect on Finnish needs for gas or communication. The Finnish Border Guard said that the damage was clearly not just a normal leak. National Bureau of Investigation is suggesting one might call it "aggravated vandalism".
Finnish Transport and Communications Agency says communication cable cut has no impact whatsoever as they have failovers.
Reporter questions:
Q: Was it Russia? A: Will not speculate.
Q: What will you do next? A: Gather evidence at the scene, see if there is a connection between the two connections being cut.
Q: How far are the damaged spots from each other? A: The cables are not right next to each other, but in the overall same area.
Q: How large is the damage? A: Large enough that it is clearly intentional damage.
Q: Did you see any ships or quakes? A: No explosion-like quakes. There is always a lot of traffic in the area.
Q: Heard there was a Russian research vessel called Sibiryakov in that area in September? A: Will not comment, there are always many ships of different origin in the area.
Q: Is there a growing military threat near the Finnish border after the incident? A: No.
Q: Is it clearly an explosion or could it be something else? A: It looks like it was not an explosion. It is currently difficult to investigate because of the conditions at sea.
Q: What does it mean that your "current responsiveness is elevated"? A: No we are operating as normal, but we are just paying some extra attention to these connections. Will not give details in what way.
As we know, there's no Russian pipeline gas sales. Estonia and Finland were building floating LNG terminals, one in each country but also collaborating. It is expensive. A floating LNG terminal is basically a rented LNG tanker that has gasification equipment onboard. It's next to a pier with a natural gas pipe. In the end it was placed in Finland. The Estonian terminal construction was halted. Tanker is rented from USA. LNG is brought to the floating terminal, gasified, put to pipe network. There's this pipe between Finland and Estonia too.
Finland actually buys and ships the LNG for the terminal from ... Russia! This is because of existing contracts that can't be breached because there's no EU wide sanction for LNG buying from Russia.
Finland does not heat any houses with gas (There was a little bit in district heating). Also Finland has energy abundance since Olkiluoto 3 coming online and massive amounts of wind built in the last years. Also hydro and great grid connections to Sweden, Norway and Estonia. I think there has been very little use for the LNG in Finland.
Estonia is still grid connected to Finland and grid and gas connected to Latvia. Closest LNG terminal in the pipeline network is in Klaipeda, Lithuania. There's also the aborted LNG terminal in Estonia's Paldiski that's relatively far along.
So the real target of this attack could be Estonia and Baltic states in general.
Baltic states are trying to decouple from Russia's electrical grid [1]. Latvia wants to move fast, Estonia is asking for more time. Concerningly, Estonia signed an agreement recently with Finland for a new submarine cable ("Estlink 3") to import more power (as Finland has an excess due to their new nuclear generator recently coming online, current interconnector runs maxed out most of the time at ~1GW). This infra may be at go forward risk from Russia, making the investment questionable at this time (unless the route and burial depth can sufficiently defend against a nation state threat actor).
Baltic States can disconnect already in case of an emergency. The infrastructure is ready, several tests have been conducted. Lithuania wanted to disconnect already, but Estonia pushed for more conservative approach: they want more synchronous condensers to handle a higher number of possible simultaneous failures in the system. It's a technical debate whether that is necessary (Lithuanian operator thinks it isn't): the probability of such failure is already very small, but the Estonian operator wants to reduce it a bit further.
Different company, called Gasum has "take or pay type" type LNG contract with Russian Gasprom. Gasum must buy a certain amount of LNG from Russia every year. They are contractually obligated to pay for the gas even of they don't take it.
Neither Natural gas nor LNG are subject to EU sanctions. Sanctions would be legal cause to end the contract.
Whoever sabotaged Nordstream really opened a can of worms. Now there is nothing safe sadly. There was no need to sabotage it, it's actually an attack on Germany's sovereignty. Germany could have just not taken delivery.
Germany probably could not refuse delivery without political fallout from increased gas prices, right? It could have been a “Cortés burning the ships” moment, with elements inside NATO (maybe even within the German government) cutting off Russian gas irrevocably in order to prevent domestic considerations from influencing German decision makers.
The story of “Russians so crazy they blew up their own pipeline that gave them huge cash flows plus undue influence on European politics” just makes absolutely no sense to me.
It's widely forgotten but the Nord Stream attackers actually messed up and missed the Nord Stream 2B pipe, so in fact to this day Germany is refusing gas delivery.
The B pipe of Nord Stream 2, meanwhile, wasn't harmed at all – and could easily be put into use even today. But why did the perpetrators leave one of the four pipes undamaged? There are some indications that the saboteurs confused the A and B pipes of Nord Stream 2 in the darkness and unintentionally attacked the same pipe twice.
At the time of the explosion, the pipeline was not delivering any gas; Russia never turned the pipeline back on after they shutdown for summer maintenance.
At the time of the attack, Russia had spent months giving multiple fake excuses as to why they weren’t sending gas through the pipeline[1]. Interesting bit:
> Russian officials and Gazprom representatives continue to insist that Germany could easily solve the problem by simply agreeing to certify the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and accept deliveries via it.
What’s interesting is that Nord Stream 2 wasn’t needed when Russia first started saying that certifying it would bring gas back, and European governments said as much. After the explosion, however, the previous Russian claim became a reality, and Putin pushed for certifying Nord Stream 2 as a solution[2].
It’s still unclear who was responsible for the attack, but the claims that Russia would have no motive ignore what was actually happen in the lead up to the explosion.
75-230 kt is a lot from a single event, but trivial compared to some persistent LNG leaks. It’s 0.002% to 0.004% of the current methane in the atmosphere diminishing to half that in 6–8 years, which again is a lot from a single event but not particularly relevant long term.
One Russian mine was leaking ~400kt every 6 months and they didn’t fix it just cut that down to 1/3.
NATO does not seem at all aligned here. I wonder if we've entered an era where different NATO nations are going to hack chunks off of our own noses to spite our face so to speak?
You're right though in the end. These actions have lifted a taboo. Globally. Nothing will be safe any longer. Actors will cut pipelines. Internet cables. You name it. It's already happening more often than people think. There are no longer any sacred cows. We'll just need to learn to operate in a world with a higher level of "infrastructural fragility". But it will be sad for regular people in the world, because in the end, that's who will be hurt, and it sucks.
>Nothing will be safe any longer. Actors will cut pipelines. Internet cables. You name it.
Among the first things the UK did in WW1 was to cut Germany's international telegraph lines, while the UK's remained intact because it had built (and, more accurately, had the ability to build) the All Red Line. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Red_Line>
In general I agree. But if you're going to hold a news conference, if you want anyone to show up, you have to tell people when the news conference will be.
> "Although much is to be determined, in mid-Sep
@gapinskimj wrote in our Kaliningrad Military Digest about the Russian Sibiryakov hydrographic survey vessel's movements near the Balticconnector. We're not pointing fingers, but it's highly likely that Russians surveyed the pipe"
>Small fishing ship with a winch is only thing you need to target shallow water pipelines.
This is absurd. The Baltic is the most heavily monitored body of water on earth. It would be captured plain as day on satellite, radar, and acoustic data if this was done from the surface. The only possibility is submarine sabotage, of which Russia maintains the most advanced known capabilities in the world, and is the only such entity with a possible motive.
So far I haven't seen anything indicating Russian involvement, both seismologists and the navy have confirmed that they haven't detected anything that indicates sabotage. Has there been any additional information after those?
The article states one unnamed policy source, whereas the navy and seismologists have made public, named, specific statements. That's why I'm asking if there's anything of substance beyond she-said-he-said.
"NORSAR have detected a probable explosion along the Finnish coast of the Baltic Sea at 01:20 (local time in Finland) on 8th October 2023. /.../ The local magnitude of the event has been estimated at 1.0, which is much lower than the Nord Stream explosion detected in September 2022."
- An attempt to claim force majeure to get out of their gas contract with Germany so that Germany can't seize their frozen Russian funds for non delivery.
Also, one shouldn't assume that an apparatus which blundered its way into this costly Ukraine quagmire for no benefit is acting 100% rationally.
A commonly missed detail is that only one of the two Nordstream 2 pipes was blown up. After the event, Putin reiterated that he was "ready" to resume gas deliveries, if only the EU would play ball:
Blowing up one of the Nordstream 2 pipes was the remaining way to put even more pressure on Germany ahead of the heating season. Germany had already decided not to certify Nordstream 2, so from Russia's point of view there was only economic upside to whacking it: a finite chance of Germany caving vs both pipelines remaining unused for the foreseeable future.
On top of that, there was an obvious security-related upside. By demonstrating the vulnerability of Western energy and communications infrastructure, the event delivered a not-so-subtle threat. The choice of locations was also "interesting": in the economic zone of NATO candidate Sweden, close to its electric cable to Poland, and in the economic zone of Denmark, close to the new pipeline from Norway to Poland.
As far as I know, they never figured out who did that. Could have been Russia although the reasoning seems absurd, with excuses like, Putin is so crazy he would blow up his own pipeline.
Anyway, the fact that they just threw an accusation like that, widely in the media, and never bothered to definitively conclude an investigation into the cause puts all "pipeline" news into boy-who-cried-wolf territory for me. (Enjoy that sentence.)
Der Spiegel[1][2] and Washington Post would like a word with you ...
I can't speak for the rest of "the media," but what I remember was a different narrative, more along the lines of, "This sounds like something that Russia would do, but it really only hurts Russia, so maybe they didn't. Hey look at that new shiny story over there ..."[3]
Der Spiegel stuck with the story and is convinced it was "Ukraine," but it isn't clear to me if they mean Ukraine the state or Ukrainian citizens with a bunch of explosives and a yacht.
Which, I'm sorry, I know natural gas is important, but what fun I want to see the movie.
You should check the comments after the article there... It seems that things are not quite as article makes it to be... there was no explosion nor there is any reason to point fingers...
I get in the forums people would say all kinds of things, but for government officials, you would think they would know not to talk before they know for sure....
"The damage to the underwater infrastructure has been taken seriously and its causes have been investigated since Sunday. The state administration has been closely informed about the situation.
It is likely that the damage to both the gas pipe and the communication cable is the result of external activity. The cause of the damage is not yet clear, the investigation continues in cooperation between Finland and Estonia.
We are also in constant contact with our allies and partners. I had a conversation with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg today. NATO is ready to assist in investigations.
Finland is prepared and our preparedness is good. These events have no effect on our security of service."
Prime minister says it is considered not possible to be a normal fault, but that it is "because of external influence". No effect on Finnish needs for gas or communication. The Finnish Border Guard said that the damage was clearly not just a normal leak. National Bureau of Investigation is suggesting one might call it "aggravated vandalism".
Finnish Transport and Communications Agency says communication cable cut has no impact whatsoever as they have failovers.
Reporter questions:
Q: Was it Russia? A: Will not speculate.
Q: What will you do next? A: Gather evidence at the scene, see if there is a connection between the two connections being cut.
Q: How far are the damaged spots from each other? A: The cables are not right next to each other, but in the overall same area.
Q: How large is the damage? A: Large enough that it is clearly intentional damage.
Q: Did you see any ships or quakes? A: No explosion-like quakes. There is always a lot of traffic in the area.
Q: Heard there was a Russian research vessel called Sibiryakov in that area in September? A: Will not comment, there are always many ships of different origin in the area.
Q: Is there a growing military threat near the Finnish border after the incident? A: No.
Q: Is it clearly an explosion or could it be something else? A: It looks like it was not an explosion. It is currently difficult to investigate because of the conditions at sea.
Q: What does it mean that your "current responsiveness is elevated"? A: No we are operating as normal, but we are just paying some extra attention to these connections. Will not give details in what way.
The press conference is now over.