A mere four days after the Chinese-owned Yi Peng 3, the chief suspect in the recent cutting of telecommunication cables in the Baltic Sea, left the region, another ship cut cables in the Baltic Sea. Those orchestrating the string of suspected cable sabotage incidents are becoming decidedly brazen—and the consequences may affect not just communications, but crucial energy supplies, too.
As part of its green transition, Norway has decided that its oil and gas platforms should be powered by electricity from the mainland rather than gas turbines. That means most of Norway’s energy production depends on the impeccable functioning of electricity cables—and in turn, so does the rest of Europe, since Norway is now the region’s top supplier of natural gas. With just a few sliced cables, Russia—perhaps with China’s help again—could disrupt a continent.
A mere four days after the Chinese-owned Yi Peng 3, the chief suspect in the recent cutting of telecommunication cables in the Baltic Sea, left the region, another ship cut cables in the Baltic Sea. Those orchestrating the string of suspected cable sabotage incidents are becoming decidedly brazen—and the consequences may affect not just communications, but crucial energy supplies, too.
As part of its green transition, Norway has decided that its oil and gas platforms should be powered by electricity from the mainland rather than gas turbines. That means most of Norway’s energy production depends on the impeccable functioning of electricity cables—and in turn, so does the rest of Europe, since Norway is now the region’s top supplier of natural gas. With just a few sliced cables, Russia—perhaps with China’s help again—could disrupt a continent.
The New Year’s festivities have brought a troubling reminder of the sorry state of our planet: United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres announced in his New Year’s message that the past 10 years have been the ten hottest years on record.
Reducing the world’s carbon dioxide emissions is a critical necessity, and few countries are going about it more energetically than Norway. Last year, 24 percent of the country’s registered passenger cars were electric vehicles (EVs), an increase from 5 percent in 2017. Norway now tops the global ranking in terms of its percentage of EVs per 100,000 residents, and the 10 most-bought cars in the country in the first half of 2022 were EVs. What’s more, 95 percent of electricity consumed in Norway is renewable.
It’s only logical for Norway to turn next to its oil and gas sector, which supplies not only Norway, but large parts of Europe, too. Norway has become the go-to provider for the many Western countries now trying to wean themselves off Russian energy. In 2022, Norway became the EU’s biggest supplier of natural gas; in the first quarter of 2023, 46 percent of the EU’s pipeline natural gas imports came from Norway. Its exports of crude oil have also increased since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022. Norway is also the United Kingdom’s largest supplier of gas and crude.
It’s certainly safer to import fossil fuels from Norway than from certain other countries, and it’s almost certainly also cleaner, because the Scandinavian hydrocarbon giant is serious about making oil and production less environmentally harmful.
It does so, too, through its enormous sovereign wealth fund—the world’s largest—which places a strong focus on environmental, social, and governance investment, including the goal of carbon dioxide emissions reduction. Still, the country’s energy sector accounts for one-quarter of its national greenhouse gas emissions, and a lot of these emissions stem from the gas turbines that power the drilling platforms.
If the government’s plans succeed, by 2030, the carbon dioxide emissions from Norwegian oil and gas fields will be slashed by 50 percent. The country is going about the enterprise systematically. The industrial equivalents of electric charging stations are being built along the coast, from which point undersea cables transport electricity to offshore fields. Eventually, the government wants all offshore platforms to be powered by electricity from land rather than the gas turbines powering them today.
Perhaps surprisingly, some environmental groups have not been excited about the undertaking, arguing that it amounts to greenwashing of the country’s oil and gas sector. But the transition continues. Equinor, Norway’s state-owned energy giant, has already partially or fully switched the energy supply for four of its North Sea fields to electricity delivered from the mainland. The company claims that the carbon dioxide emissions consequently eliminated are the equivalent to 2.5 percent of Norway’s entire greenhouse gas emissions in 2021.
All this requires a battery of new undersea cables connecting the oil and gas fields and the mainland. (For the avoidance of any doubt: There are also electricity cables, internet cables, and telephone cables. Undersea cables don’t double as transmitters of other goods.)
Originally, electrifying Norway’s energy production seemed to be a terrific idea and an important contribution to the fight against climate change. But today, with unknown perpetrators sabotaging undersea installations at an accelerating rate, undersea cables and pipelines are suddenly at enormous risk.
Russia has clearly demonstrated that it’s willing to attack undersea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea, and that it doesn’t mind leaving clear footprints. The Newnew Polar Bear, the Hong Kong-registered ship that remains the prime suspect in the apparent sabotage of one pipeline and two undersea cables in the Gulf of Finland in October 2023, had close links to Russia and dragged its anchor across the installations after leaving Russia’s Baltic port of Kaliningrad.
After its speedy exit from the Baltic Sea, the Newnew Polar Bear sailed on toward Russia’s Arctic coast via the Norwegian Sea. Then came the November 2024 incident involving two Baltic Sea cables and another Chinese-owned merchant ship that had just left a Russian port. And then, on Christmas Day, there was another incident involving the Cook Island-registered shadow tanker Eagle S, which was carrying Russian crude from St. Petersburg to Egypt, and a string of other mauled Baltic Sea cables.
Russian fishing boats, merchant ships, and research vessels equipped with unusual surveillance capabilities have also recently been found loitering near military installations along the Norwegian coast.
“The intelligence activity is conducted on top of the normal commercial activity,” Nils Andreas Stensones, the head of the Norwegian Intelligence Service, told the country’s public broadcaster, NRK, in April 2023.
The Kremlin doesn’t seem to mind if its involvement becomes known. In fact, the more concern that it causes its neighbors, the more bang Russia gets for its buck. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, every vessel generally has the right to sail wherever it likes, so long as it doesn’t cause harm to the coastal state—but in the case of cable sabotage, the harm won’t be apparent until after the ship has sailed onward.
As I documented in my recent Atlantic Council report on the shadow fleet—the global collection of ships with unclear ownership, management, and insurance, as well as a habit of disguising their movements—over the past couple of years Norway has seen a substantial increase in shadow vessels sailing along its coast. Like the Eagle S, the shadow tanker that has become the prime suspect in the Christmas Day cable cuts, these vessels could also double as cable-cutters.
Indeed, at the behest of Russia, any vessel sailing along Norway’s coast could potentially drag its anchor across a few electricity cables—the equivalent of Russia having an off switch for a big part of Europe’s energy production. As with previous cable cuts, Russia could claim to have no knowledge of the matter. And as in the past, it would be difficult to prove that the crew intended to cause harm.
Luckily for Norway, the oil and gas fields’ existing gas turbines are an invaluable backup. But the country, whose location happens to offer excellent conditions for offshore windfarms, is also aiming to become a wind energy leader and is already home to the world’s largest floating windfarm. Such installations will also need a backup power source. It would be a painful irony if clean wind had to be powered by dirty gas—but it’s better than the prospect of hostile vessels cutting off wind power altogether.
In the meantime, the Royal Norwegian Navy and Coast Guard are likely to increase surveillance of the crucial electricity cables. The country’s fishers are likely to keep their experienced eyes on passing merchant vessels. Yet the rest of Europe’s residents, too, can help thwart the force of potential cable cuts along the coast of Norway by learning how to spend a few hours without power.
It’s not a big sacrifice. Just ask the Ukrainians, who have regularly had to go without power in recent years when Russia has hit their power plants.
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