Nato countries are scrambling to improve security of highly vulnerable undersea pipelines and communications cables after the apparent Nord Stream attack in the Baltic Sea underlines the west’s extreme vulnerability.
Four gas leaks on two Nord Stream pipelines have now been reported after blasts were detected on Monday. According to several reports citing European officials, Russian vessels were seen in the vicinity of the Nord Stream I and II pipelines where they were damaged, but an examination of the damage may not be possible for weeks for safety reasons, and no proof of Moscow’s involvement has been presented.
Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, ordered stepped-up military and police patrols at the country’s oil and gas rigs and pipelines after the explosions. On Monday, before the Nord Stream blasts, the Norwegian Petroleum Safety Authority had reported unidentified drones flying near Norwegian offshore oil and gas rigs. Støre described the drone activity as “abnormal”.
Norway is Europe’s principal gas supplier and has nearly 9,000km of pipeline to patrol. Any interruption in its supply could trigger an immediate energy crisis and a rupture in active pipelines would lead to an ecological disaster. Oslo has asked for help from Nato allies in helping patrol its infrastructure.
“The Norwegian response is understandable,” Britain’s first sea lord and chief of naval staff, Adm Sir Ben Key, said. “There is a vulnerability around anything that sits on the seabed, whether that’s gas pipelines, whether that’s data cables that places an obligation on organisations like the Royal Navy – but not just us – to have a means of monitoring and providing security around it.”
Key, speaking on board the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth during a visit to New York, said he could not go into detail as to what countermeasures the Royal Navy were taking, but added: “It’s fair to say that we are keeping a close eye on where we think those most critical vulnerabilities are at the moment and how we better protect them.”
Several European politicians have blamed Russia for the explosions but Key said there is no definitive evidence. “We have to be very careful about the language we choose about any sense at this stage of direct attribution because I don’t think that that’s all clear,” he said.
The west is particularly vulnerable in its reliance on undersea cables that carry more than 90% of the world’s internet traffic. If those cables were severed it would trigger a multifaceted crisis, affecting most aspects of modern life. Russia’s communications infrastructure is more land-based.
“The world’s information is reliant on those cables,” Britain’s chief of the defence staff, Adm Sir Tony Radakin, said. “This is very, very sensitive, but we have a variety of systems as to how we protect those networks, but we also recognise that these are areas where we need to do additional investment.”
Radakin said the Royal Navy has commissioned a specialised vessel, the multi-role ocean surveillance ship, for patrolling and protecting underwater infrastructure using sensors and autonomous underwater drones. The Royal Navy hopes to buy two of the ships but they are not expected to enter service before 2024.
For several years, Russian submarines have been spotted loitering near critical cables and pipelines on the seabed, though western defence officials said there has been no sign of an increase in Russian underwater activity in recent months during the Ukraine war.
Russia has nuclear-powered mini-submarines capable of operating at depths of 1,000 metres, equipped with mechanical arms able to manipulate or cut cables. These mini-subs need to be transported to the vicinity by much bigger submarines, and the Russians have two modern classes of vessel capable of carrying and delivering them, the Podmoskovye and the Belgorod. Detecting an attack may involve being able to monitor these larger submarines.
“We keep a constant watch on movements out of Kaliningrad and the Kola peninsula,” a Nordic military official said, referring to two centres of Russian naval activity. The official described them as “choke points”, where Russian submarines would have to pass through a relatively narrow sea passage to reach the Baltic and North Atlantic.
“But it could also come from a trawler, which might have been at the location a month before any attack,” the Nordic official said.
