Helsinki (Finland), August 18 (ANI): Western officials and analysts suspect that a Chinese container ship may be involved in the damage to the Balticconnector gas pipeline, a vital Baltic Sea gas pipeline linking Estonia and Finland, Voice of America (VOA) reported.
The incident occurred in October last year. According to the Chinese government, the damage was caused by a Hong Kong-registered ship called the Newnew Polar Bear. However, Beijing attributed the destruction to a storm at sea, although there were reports that no such storm occurred, Voice of America reported.
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This discrepancy has raised concerns and suspicions among experts investigating the incident. In an interview with Estonia’s public radio ERR on August 13, Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said he was skeptical of China’s claim that a storm was the cause of the incident, Voice of America reported.
“For me personally, it is very difficult to understand how a ship’s captain could not notice for so long that his anchor was dragging on the seabed. However, it is the task of the public prosecutor’s office to complete the investigation,” he said.
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Markku Mylly, former director of the European Maritime Safety Agency, also claimed that Finland’s capital, Helsinki, had not experienced any storms in the Gulf of Finland at that time.
Finnish newspaper Iltalehti also reportedly consulted data from the Finnish Meteorological Institute and confirmed Mylly’s claims. Meanwhile, Pevkur mentioned in a statement to ERR that Estonia would not give up its claims for compensation against China, VOA reported.
According to the VOA report, the oil and gas pipeline through the Baltic Sea between the two countries was built with EU support and opened in 2019 at a cost of around $331 million to wean Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from dependence on Russia for natural gas supplies.
The pipeline in question was the source of almost all Estonian natural gas supplies and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Estonia reportedly temporarily relied on Latvian natural gas following the incident.
According to a press report, VOA claimed that the pipeline was reopened for normal operation in April this year after repairs worth around $38 million, said the senior vice president of Gasgrid Finland. In addition, some telecommunications cables were also reportedly damaged in the incident.
Finnish and Estonian investigative authorities recovered the ship’s anchor from the seabed near the damaged pipeline following the incident, but those authorities reportedly traced the piece back to the ship and attempted to contact the vessel, which did not respond.
The incident came at a time when tensions are high between Europe and Russia over sanctions against the invasion of Ukraine. However, critics suspect that it was a deliberate act of sabotage orchestrated by either Russia or its ally China. After damaging the pipeline, the ship in question initially headed for the Russian ports of St. Petersburg and Arkhangelsk and later docked in the Chinese port of Tianjin, according to a VOA report.
Eoin Micheal McNamara, a global security expert at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, was quoted in VOA as saying that the Finns doubted Beijing’s claim that the ship’s damage to the pipeline was an accident.
“Elsewhere in the Nordic-Baltic region, underwater infrastructure has also been damaged by ‘man-made activities’ in recent years. For example, there was the sabotage of the Nord Stream in 2022 and before that the severing of a data cable between Norway and its Arctic island of Svalbard,” said McNamara. “As geopolitical tensions increase, more targeted acts of sabotage are to be expected,” said McNamara.
Estonia and Finland are still jointly investigating the ship, which belongs to China’s NewNew Shipping Company, VOA said.
The Estonian prosecutor’s office leading the investigation said that under international law, China’s statement that the ship caused the damage cannot be used as evidence in a criminal investigation because China has not invited Estonian criminal investigators to participate in Beijing’s own investigation, according to VOA.
VOA contacted the Chinese Foreign Ministry on the matter but was referred to the Chinese maritime authorities. Currently, both the Finnish and Estonian federal investigative authorities have stated that they are in correspondence and cooperation with the Chinese and will publish a report once the investigation is completed. (ANI)
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