September 2024, Vol. 251, No. 9
Features
EU, NATO Step Up Fight Against Sabotage of Gas Infrastructure
By Andreas Walstad, European Correspondent
(P&GJ) — Safeguarding European energy and gas infrastructure against sabotage and cyberattacks will be one of the top priorities for NATO and the EU institutions over the coming years as the Nord Stream attacks have altered the energy security landscape for good.
The explosions damaging the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea in September 2022, followed by the damages to the Baltic Connector between Finland and Estonia in October 2023, brought a new dimension to the term energy security. There is broad concern in Europe and the West that hostile actors including Russia will target key energy infrastructure such as gas pipelines and power cables with explosives, cyberattacks or other types of sabotage.
Norwegian intelligence, for example, warned that Russia has broadened its knowledge about Norwegian gas infrastructure and that the threat of sabotage is real.
“Russia has been mapping Norwegian critical oil and gas infrastructure for years. This mapping is still ongoing, both physically and in the digital domain. The acquired knowledge could become important in a conflict situation,” said a report released by the Norwegian Intelligence Service (NIS) earlier this year.
The report added that damage to Norwegian petroleum infrastructure would harm both Norway and the receiving countries in Europe. After the invasion of Ukraine, and the consequent curtailments of Russian piped gas to European customers, Norway has become the main supplier of piped gas to Europe. Norway has, for example, direct export pipelines to the UK, France, Germany and Belgium.
As for cyberattacks, the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity has warned that in 2023 alone, over 200 reported cyber-incidents targeted the energy sector and more than half of them were directed specifically at Europe.
The challenges are enormous. Europe’s gas network is vast and difficult to patrol, especially subsea. NATO has said it seeks to increase its competence in supporting the protection of critical energy infrastructure, mainly through training and exercises. At the same time, it has underscored that protecting energy infrastructure is primarily a national responsibility.
Cross-Border Effort
Nevertheless, planning and effective collaboration between EU countries and allies seems crucial as many gas pipelines and electricity interconnections are cross-border and can encompass multiple jurisdictions.
In June, the Council of the EU adopted a recommendation on a blueprint in a move to coordinate an EU-level response to disruptions to critical infrastructure with significant cross-border relevance. The Blueprint recommends several actions such as information sharing, preparation of incident reports and technical support from member states and EU institutions to the affected member states, to name a few.
The blueprint complements the resilience of critical entities (CER) directive which will apply throughout the EU from October this year. The CER directive will oblige member states to put in place a national strategy to enhance the resilience of critical entities and carry out risk assessments.
Frank Umbach, head of Research at the European Cluster for Climate, Energy and Resource Security at the University of Bonn, and NATO-Consultant, told the P&GJ that protection of critical infrastructure will be a high priority for the incoming European Commission which will take office towards the end of the year for a five-year term.
“We need better collaboration at international level. Some cables and pipelines are in international waters where multilateral collaboration is needed. In other cases bilateral collaboration between two countries is called for,” Umbach said.
New Technologies
Umbach recently co-authored a report entitled Building Energy Resilience from the Seabed Up which was published by the European Initiative for Energy Security and the Energy Security Leadership Council. The report noted, among other things, that while cyber protection must remain a priority, policies and technical solutions that can help protect critical infrastructure from physical attacks and sabotage will be needed.
“A lot of new technology is available,” Umbach said. “NATO cannot patrol the whole North Sea or Baltic Sea. But using drones in the air and under water is an option. Moreover, using sensors to track activity on gas pipelines and power cables are not so expensive.”
Andris Piebalgs, a Latvian diplomat and former EU commissioner for energy, who also co-authored the report, told the P&GJ that protecting infrastructure in general is highly demanding and that energy is no exception with this regard. He said grid operators should be remunerated in order to be able to invest in protective measures.
“A good illustration is that before the Olympics, there was major sabotage of French railways. This shows how difficult it is to prevent attacks in general because French railways are quite well protected. As for energy, I think we need technological progress,” Piebalgs said.
He added that regulators should give the possibility for network operators to charge the users in order to invest in protective measures.
“We are not talking about substantial costs” Piebalgs added. “Let’s get the grid operators remunerated, then they will find the best solutions. For example drones, digitalization and artificial intelligence.”
He stressed that NATO ships can patrol some areas where there is suspected danger, but the costs are immense and so is the area.
Transparency Needed
German authorities are currently investigating the Nord Stream incidents while former investigations by Sweden and Denmark have been dropped. Danish police and Denmark’s national security and intelligence service (PET) concluded earlier this year that the pipeline had been sabotaged but did not find enough evidence to carry out a criminal prosecution.
Meanwhile, the Swedish Prosecution Authority dropped the probe after concluding that neither Sweden nor Swedish citizens were involved in the pipeline attacks, which occurred in international waters.
The results of the Finnish investigation into the Balticconnector damages is expected to be released this autumn. The investigation has focused on the movements of the Hong Kong-flagged container ship Newnew Polar Bear, which is under suspicion of having damaged the pipeline with the help of an anchor.
Piebalgs said more transparency is needed in order to get a better understanding of how the sabotage was carried out.
“We need sober analysis on what actually happened with these two pipelines, with Nord Stream and Balticconnector. Who blew it up and how? Satellite images don’t give enough clues. As for the Balticconnector, why did nobody notice anything suspicious? Why did it take so long from the incident to action was taken? Unfortunately, there is not enough transparency about it,” he said.
Benjamin Schmitt, senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, who also co-authored the report, said information sharing was crucial and that the companies operating the pipelines and interconnections often possess important data.
“It is their infrastructure and they have to play a part in it,” he said. “They have the data at the end of the day. An electricity transmission line may very well have a fiber-optic cable for communications and monitoring. That data that the company has is really important. Not only for its own piece of infrastructure but also for the maritime area around it.”
Schmitt also noted that NATO is starting to build up its subsea infrastructure protection capacity.
“In part, I hope what that will return is a more centralized way of sharing data on infrastructure and monitoring of infrastructure in particular,” he said. “You know when you are talking about cables that are out in the seabed underneath the high seas there are not a lot of folks around to witness it or respond and it may take days or weeks to figure out what’s happened.”
All Eyes on Moscow
With the German investigation still ongoing, the jury is still out on who was behind the Nord Stream attacks in the Baltic Sea. Although observers generally suspect Moscow is to blame, some media reports have suggested the responsibility might lie elsewhere, perhaps with Ukraine or the U.S. or both.
“I am pretty convinced the Russians blew up Nord Stream,” Schmitt said. “They had a large number of subsea warfare capable vessels on site both in June and then just before the blasts themselves in September 2022, a day or two before the explosions took place.
“I think there is significant evidence pointing to Russia in this. And they had significant motivation to do so too. They were not supplying gas through Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 was sanctioned and, therefore, couldn’t supply gas.”
He added:
“Especially with their own self-inflicted and self-directed political cut-off of Nord Stream 1 during the summer of 2022 they were getting into a situation where off-takers in Europe would have legal grounds to sue them for non-deliveries and indeed that’s what happened. So having a force majeure scenario like this is from Gazprom’s perspective likely useful to get out of those fines that’s they would have to pay for non-delivery.”
The aforementioned report noted that Vladimir Putin is targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure to disrupt defense and industrial capacity and civilian life and weaken morale. In addition to power plants and grids, Russian forces have also targeted Ukraine’s gas storage facilities which are also used by Western companies.
The report said:
“Russia’s targeting of Ukraine’s energy system underlines the importance of diversified energy infrastructure, interconnectivity, flexibility resources, distributed generation, and a secure and steady supply of replacement parts and repair materials such as power cables, transformers, and generators.
“NATO and the EU should increase their support for the protection of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure through further investments in both active air defense, counter-drone, and passive defense systems. The West must learn from Ukraine’s example that the protection of energy infrastructure is a high priority to deter the Kremlin and defeat Russia’s strategy.”
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