Explosions along the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea in September have underscored the vulnerability of Europe’s critical energy and communications infrastructure in its northern seas as tensions with Russia spiral over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Swedish and Danish investigators believe “several hundred kilograms” of explosives were used to blast huge holes in the undersea pipelines that run from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea. While suspicion immediately fell on Moscow, which has been trying to exploit its energy dominance on the continent – and most notably, wants to starve Europe of energy this winter – ongoing investigations by Sweden, Denmark and Germany have yet to determine who was behind the attack. Moscow has denied any involvement.
The explosions had little direct impact on Europe’s energy security. Moscow suspended gas transit through the original Nord Stream 1 pipeline for 10 days in July citing technical difficulties, while Nord Stream’s certification was suspended 2 days before the Russian invasion of Germany. But the fact that an apparent act of sabotage could take place in the busy Baltic Sea, surrounded by NATO members as well as prospective members Finland and Sweden, has underscored the difficulty of patrolling Europe’s vast northern waterways, which are home to critical energy assets and communication networks.
Explosions along the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea in September have underscored the vulnerability of Europe’s critical energy and communications infrastructure in its northern seas as tensions with Russia spiral over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Swedish and Danish investigators believe “several hundred kilograms” of explosives were used to blast huge holes in the undersea pipelines that run from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea. While suspicion immediately fell on Moscow, which has been trying to exploit its energy dominance on the continent – and most notably, wants to starve Europe of energy this winter – ongoing investigations by Sweden, Denmark and Germany have yet to determine who was behind the attack. Moscow has denied any involvement.
The explosions had little direct impact on Europe’s energy security. Moscow suspended gas transit through the original Nord Stream 1 pipeline for 10 days in July citing technical difficulties, while Nord Stream’s certification was suspended 2 days before the Russian invasion of Germany. But the fact that an apparent act of sabotage could take place in the busy Baltic Sea, surrounded by NATO members as well as prospective members Finland and Sweden, has underscored the difficulty of patrolling Europe’s vast northern waterways, which are home to critical energy assets and communication networks.
“Seventy percent of all the world’s energy is either found at sea or transported by sea, and 93 percent of all the world’s data is transmitted via undersea cables,” said Bruce Jones, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “We have very limited protection for both.”
Norway – which is now the European Union’s biggest supplier of natural gas as Brussels seeks to shed its reliance on Russian energy –elevated its military alert level on Tuesday after receiving a spate of reports of unidentified drones flying near offshore energy installations. authorities also arrested seven Russians to control the drones and take pictures sensitive areaswhile the Norwegian embassy in Washington, DC said security and surveillance around energy and oil facilities had been stepped up.
“This is the worst security situation in several decades,” said Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said on Monday. “There is no sign of Russia expanding its warfare to other countries, but rising tensions make us more vulnerable to threats, intelligence operations and influence campaigns.”
NATO has also increased its air and naval presence in the Baltic and North Seas in the wake of the attacks, while Germany, France and the UK have offered to help Oslo monitor energy infrastructure in the North Sea. In early October, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pledged to “stress test” energy and communications infrastructure for vulnerabilities, noting the explosions along the Nord Stream pipelines, whose parent company is majority-owned by Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom, have “shown how vulnerable our energy infrastructure is”.
Naval experts were not surprised that the pipelines in the Baltic Sea could face a deliberate attack, despite the waters being recently dubbed “NATO sea”. Even in a comparatively small area, it’s almost impossible to maintain a constant picture of what’s going on above and below the surface, experts say. “Even a relatively small sea is terribly large,” Jones said.
NATO military and navies have warned that Europe’s seabed is its soft underside, said Julian Pawlak, a research fellow at the Universität der Bundeswehr in Hamburg, Germany.
Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014 was followed by a dramatic increase in Russian submarine activity near undersea cables in the North Atlantic. At a 2020 meeting of NATO defense ministers, Russia’s activity was discussed amid growing concerns that undersea cable networks in the Moscow region could be cut or tapped. A report requested by the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Security and Defense, published in June noticed, that While submarine cables represent the “backbone of the global economy” and account for the vast majority of global communications, including $10 trillion in financial transactions every day, “European governance of cable protection and resilience still lags behind and needs improvement.”
While Russia’s military, despite its relative advantage in scale, struggles to make headway in a conventional land war in Ukraine, Moscow has long relied on a wide range of intelligence activities, including disinformation, political interference and assassination, to disrupt and divide Europe.
“Major sabotage in the middle of the Baltic Sea and all the other things that are going on remind us that we are in a very different world compared to January,” said a European official, who provided background information on condition of anonymity spoke.
As Russia’s ability to exploit its energy chokehold over Europe has dwindled as the continent scrambles to diversify its fuel supply, experts said Moscow may increasingly turn to other asymmetric warfare tactics to exert pressure. “Gazprom and Russia no longer have the leverage to inflict economic pain on the gas side,” said Henning Gloystein, energy expert at Eurasia Group. “They have to keep going if they want to keep inflicting pain and creating some kind of insecurity in Europe.”
Moscow has the world’s most sophisticated submarine program after the United States, Jones said, and the submarine fleet was largely unscathed by the war in Ukraine that has bogged down the country’s army. “They have the skills to tap or snap underwater data cables. Obviously they have the ability for underwater sabotage of power lines and the like,” he said.
While Russia is not shying away from saber-rattling in Europe’s northern seas, Gloystein noted that the blasts along the Nord Stream pipelines took place on top of Russian infrastructure. He questioned whether Moscow would risk the forceful response that might result from the sabotage of a European or NATO member state’s pipelines. In January, the Chief of the British Armed Forces, Admiral Tony Radakin, declared warned that any attempt to cut submarine cables would be considered an “act of war.”
Such an attack on European pipelines “has implications for the triggering of Article 5; it is a direct attack on the EU, or in Norway’s case perhaps on a NATO member,” Gloystein said. “We’ll see [that] as unlikely.”
