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China ship is focus of pipeline damage probe, Finland says

cross-posted from: lemmy.ca/post/7659731

HELSINKI/VILNIUS, Oct 20 (Reuters) - An investigation into the damage to the Balticonnector gas pipeline is currently focused on the role of the Chinese NewNew Polar Bear container vessel, Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said on Friday.

Early on Oct. 8, a gas pipeline and a telecoms cable connecting Finland and Estonia were broken, in what Finnish investigators said may have been sabotage, though they have yet to conclude whether it was an accident or a deliberate act.

On Tuesday, Sweden said a third link, connecting Stockholm to Tallinn, had been damaged at roughly the same time as the other two.

“The police have established in the criminal investigation that the movements of the vessel NewNew Polar Bear flying the flag of Hong Kong coincide with the time and place of the gas pipeline damage,” NBI said in a statement.

“For this reason, the investigation is now focused on the role of the said vessel,” the Finnish investigators added.

Following Finland’s NBI statement, Estonian investigators, who are also looking into the telecoms cable incidents, said they were still looking at two ships, the NewNew Polar Bear and Russia’s Sevmorput.

“We have identified that during the incidents, the vessels NewNew Polar Bear and Sevmorput were in the area. We are still investigating whether or not these vessels had anything to do with the damage,” they said in a statement to Reuters.

Only these two ships were present at all three incident sites around the approximate time when the damage occurred, according to vessel tracking data reviewed by Reuters.

zerfuffle ,

China has literally no motive for damaging Balticconnector.

interolivary ,
@interolivary@beehaw.org avatar

they have yet to conclude whether it was an accident or a deliberate act.

Emphasis mine. Although it should be noted that people connected to the investigations have said that it’s unlikely it was an accident due to the layer of rock that covers the cable, but there’s nothing definite yet.

Also, whether they have literally no motive for sabotage is, well, questionable; “I can’t come up with a reason” isn’t equal to “they have no reason”. Seems unlikely it was intentional if it was NewNew Polar Bear, but we don’t know if that ship’s actually related to the breakage, let alone whether they did it on purpose if it was.

OurToothbrush , (edited )

The article said it seems to have been caused by mechanical damage not a bomb. So it looks like it was. Also the headline fails to mention that it is a Hong Kong ship.

mxcory ,

Just want to point out the articles does say it flew the flag of Hong Kong.

OurToothbrush ,

Sorry, I meant headline. But it is good that they acknowledge that Hong Kong is part of China when Hong Kong ships do big oopsies.

Kusimulkku ,

??

OurToothbrush ,

Oh, there was this big “Free Hong Kong” thing that insisted that Hong Kong shouldn’t be part of China

Kusimulkku ,

I don’t think that’s what it was about

The 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests (also known by other names) were a series of demonstrations against the Hong Kong government’s introduction of a bill to amend the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance in regard to extradition.

OurToothbrush ,

I mean that was the pretext but if you asked most of the people supporting it they’d probably agree it was reasonable to extradite a man who killed a pregnant woman and then ran to Hong Kong.

Kusimulkku ,

I was just correcting you on what it was about

OurToothbrush ,

You were correcting to a more shallow analysis, sure.

Kusimulkku ,

Oh, there was this big “Free Hong Kong” thing that insisted that Hong Kong shouldn’t be part of China

??

interolivary ,
@interolivary@beehaw.org avatar

Mechanical damage doesn’t automatically mean the damage is accidental.

OurToothbrush ,

But it means the damage was probably accidental. I dont see why a Hong Kong ship would want to blow up a pipeline.

interolivary ,
@interolivary@beehaw.org avatar

But it means the damage was probably accidental.

How so? It’s not like the most likely method to sabotage the pipeline would have to be explosives.

I dont see why a Hong Kong ship would want to blow up a pipeline.

Again, you not being able to come up with a reason doesn’t mean that it was accidental.

And I’m not saying it’s definitely deliberate or accidental, I’m just saying that making assumptions based on whether you can come up with a reason for it being sabotage is, in a word, silly. Well, at least unless you have some sort of deeper understanding of Chinese politics that most of us don’t have.

Plus this is all speculation at this point anyhow, since that ship’s connection to the pipeline damage hasn’t been verified in any way.

OurToothbrush ,

I agree that we can’t know for sure but a lot of signs point to accidental.

interolivary , (edited )
@interolivary@beehaw.org avatar

Well, I dunno. If it was just the Balticconnector gas pipeline, but two telecom cables were also damaged – one between Estonia and Finland and which was completely severed, and one between Estonia and Sweden – and they weren’t all that close to the pipeline for it to make sense that the damage was due to eg. a ship dropping its anchor due to the storm.

Here’s a picture of the cables. The Balticconnector cut happened at approximately its midpoint, while I’ve understood the EST-FIN cable damage happened closer to the Estonian shore, and the EST-SWE cable damage happened 50km west of Hiiumaa (the northernmost island that’s above the “Meremöisa” text in this image).

https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/4f8a53a6-3521-4638-bb51-f0e4c38f7a9b.webp

So while accidents do happen, the fact that not just one or two but three cables were damaged around the same time and separated by quite a bit of distance, it’s more than a bit suspicious. Completely possible it’s just breathtaking incompetence from the Chinese ship’s crew, but they would have had to drag their anchor for over 100km. There has been a case where an oil tanker’s crew didn’t realize they had their anchor down and it damaged two Estonian cables, but the distance was shorter (I only have a Finnish-language source for all of this, sorry. DeepL is great for translating Finnish but I don’t think they do web pages yet so you’d have to copy’n’paste).

So while I definitely believe it’s possible this was all accidental, it would have required a fantastically incompetent crew for them to not notice that they were dragging their anchor for 100 – 200km and snagged on a pretty hefty pipeline in addition to two telecom cables. But, we’ll have to see what, if anything, the investigation turns up. It’s also entirely possible that one or both of the telecom cable damages are completely unrelated to the pipeline damage, it’s not like cable damage is an extremely rare occurrence in the Baltic.

OurToothbrush ,

Yeah, that is strange. I’m still finding it hard to find any possible motivation for a commercial ship from Hong Kong (which still has a high degree of political autonomy) doing this. How would the interests of Hong Kong be served by damaging this infrastructure? Maybe they’re not actually involved in it if it is sabotage.

interolivary ,
@interolivary@beehaw.org avatar

It being registered in Hong Kong doesn’t necessarily tell us much about who’s operating the ship though.

Other suspicious ships being looked into are a couple of ships registered in Liberia: the Viktor Bakaev which is owned by SCF Novoship in Russia, and the Pskov which is owned by Sovcomflot and likewise in Russia

OurToothbrush ,

Then why is the article calling it a Chinese ship? Seems awfully xenophobic if that is the case.

interolivary ,
@interolivary@beehaw.org avatar

Good question. Based on a quick search that led me to Lloyd’s Register, it looks like its registered owner is a Chinese company called Hainan Xin Xin Yang Shipping, so that’s probably why?

TheAnonymouseJoker ,
@TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml avatar

Incoming anti-China bullshit news propaganda in the next 2 weeks. Meanwhile, USA blew up Nordstream in Germany and blames Russia for it.

sbv ,

I wonder if dragging an anchor would be enough to damage the cable.

player2 ,

It is estimated that 30-40% of damage to deep sea internet cables is done by ship anchors being dropped on or dragged across cables. This has resulted in new recommendations for the burial depth of such cables. There are many recorded examples of this happening by accident.

(PDF warning) www-geo.eng.cam.ac.uk/system/…/2017MooreE.pdf

sbv ,

That’s really interesting. Thanks.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Pretty sure it was done by a Chinese spy anchor disguised as a weather anchor.

autotldr Bot ,

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Early on Oct. 8, a gas pipeline and a telecoms cable connecting Finland and Estonia were broken, in what Finnish investigators said may have been sabotage, though they have yet to conclude whether it was an accident or a deliberate act.

“The police have established in the criminal investigation that the movements of the vessel NewNew Polar Bear flying the flag of Hong Kong coincide with the time and place of the gas pipeline damage,” NBI said in a statement.

A recently formed “huge clump of soil” deep in the clay seabed was believed to contain an extremely heavy object, and was the subject of investigation, the NBI said.

Separately, Finland’s foreign ministry said on Friday it had contacted China and Russia via diplomatic channels regarding the investigation of damage to a pipeline and a telecoms cable.

The incidents have stoked concerns about the security of energy supplies in the wider Nordic region and prompted the NATO military alliance to ramp up patrols in the Baltic Sea.

“We categorically reject as groundless any suggestions that a Rosatom-operated ship may have been in any way connected to the Balticconnector pipeline incident in the Gulf of Finland on October 8,” Rosatom said in a statement to Reuters.

The original article contains 615 words, the summary contains 205 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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