Faced With ‘Acts Of Sabotage’, EU Countries Rush To Secure Energy Assets
Multiple explosions under the Baltic Sea and the rupture of the Nord Stream pipeline system from Russia to Germany appear to be “sabotage,” NATO and EU officials said this week. A fourth leak was confirmed Thursday on the pipelines as EU countries are in overdrive to secure energy infrastructure that could be future targets.
“The main message sent by this act, described as ‘sabotage,’ is the vulnerability of all this equipment,” Phuc-Vinh Nguyen, an energy researcher at the Institut Jacques-Delors Paris think tank, told the French newspaper Le Monde.
Nguyen warned, “if such ‘accidents’ happened on a natural gas pipeline between Norway and Europe or Algeria and Europe, for example, it would be really problematic.”
Across the EU, warning after NS1 and NS2 were taken out by “highly effective explosive devices” has forced several countries to beef up the security of critical energy infrastructure this week.
We first reported Norway, now Europe’s top NatGas supplier (displacing Russia), increased security at infrastructure sites, land terminals, and platforms on the Norwegian continental shelf. The country’s Petroleum Safety Authority warned that there had been reports of mysterious drones buzzing offshore platforms.
Drones have also been spotted at France’s TotalEnergies offshore rigs in the Danish North Sea, igniting concerns that someone or even possibly a nation-state is trying to spark havoc for the European energy industry, according to Bloomberg.
The mysterious drone was spotted Wednesday near its Halfdan B oil and gas field, TotalEnergies said, adding it has increased “vigilance around security for all of our offshore assets and onshore locations.”
“I just hope that there is no idea behind it to extend the war beyond the border of Ukraine to the North Sea,” Total CEO Patrick Pouyanne told Bloomberg in an interview.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
