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.
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.
Readit News
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.
Who else it would be? Germany?
It's retaliation for Finland joining NATO.
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.
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/baltic-states-seek-to-decouple-grid-fr...
Estonias first SysCon was turned on this summer https://news.err.ee/1608976037/elering-launches-estonia-s-fi...
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.
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.
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.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/investigating-th...
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.
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>
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/putin-prepares-for-poss...
I hope this isn't the start of some campaign.
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