Undersea Power Cable Connecting Finland And Estonia Experiences Outage Capacity Reduced To 35%
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Sabotage isn’t ruled out yet.
Estlink 2, an undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia, has unexpectedly been disrupted at around 12:26 pm local time (10:26 am GMT) on Christmas Day. While Finland Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said that the outage hasn’t affected the country’s power supply, Reuters said that it did reduce the availability capacity between the two countries to 358 megawatts from its designed 1,106-megawatt installed capacity. The incident comes after the suspected sabotage of two undersea internet cables that connect Finland and Sweden to the rest Europe.
At the time of the incident, some 658 megawatts of power have been flowing from Finland to Estonia, says Finnish national electricity transmission operator Fingrid. Estonia’s electricity transmission operator Elering has also acknowledged the incident but is yet to report any disruption in its electrical supply.
There are two undersea power cables between Finland and Estonia—Estlink 1, which is west of Helsinki and Tallinna and has a capacity of 350 megawatts, and Estlink 2, which lies east of both cities and has a larger capacity of 650 megawatts. Finnish public broadcaster Yle says that Estlink 2 was unserviceable for several months earlier this year as it was undergoing maintenance, but the connection has since been restored in September. Because of this, Fingrid Operations Manager Arto Pahkin said that action by external forces could not be discounted.
“The possibility of sabotage cannot be ruled out. However, we are examining the situation as a whole and will provide information once the cause is identified,” says Pahkin. He also said, “An investigation into the incident has been initiated.” Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo also weighed in on the matter, saying on X (formerly Twitter) (machine translated), “Authorities are still on standby over Christmas and are investigating the matter.”
Finnish Authorities Board Tanker Suspected Of Damaging Undersea Cables - Russia's Shadow Fleet?
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Finland has stopped and boarded a ship suspected of causing damage to the Estlink 2 undersea power cable and three other internet lines on Christmas Day. The Cook Islands-registered oil tanker, called Eagle S, is owned by Caravella LLCFZ, which is based in the United Arab Emirates, and is apparently the only vessel that the company owns. At the time of the stop, the Financial Times said that the ship was carrying oil from Russia to Egypt and that public records placed it over the damaged cable during the time of the outage.
Sources say that the Eagle S is part of Russia’s shadow fleet, composed of old and dilapidated oil tankers. These vessels are registered in and owned by corporations based in other countries, and Russia uses them to circumvent international sanctions on its oil exports. Because of this most recent event, Finnish President Alexander Stubb posted on X (formerly Twitter) yesterday, “We must be able to prevent the risks posed by ships belonging to the Russian shadow fleet.”
There has been a string of damage and disruptions to subsea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea in the past couple of years since Russia invaded Ukraine. The last major incident before this latest development occurred in mid-November, when the Yi Peng 3, a Chinese bulk carrier traveling from Ust-Luga, Russia, to Egypt, a route similar to that which the Eagle S is taking, was suspected of deliberately dragging its anchor across the seabed to damage an undersea internet cable connecting Sweden and Lithuania on November 16. The ship is then thought to have done the same maneuver the following day, cutting the C-Lion1 communications cable between Finland and Germany.
[...] Finnish authorities are currently investigating the matter. They have boarded the ship in the Baltic Sea and sailed it to its territorial waters. They’ve discovered that the ship’s anchors are missing, which the ship’s crew likely used to damage the undersea infrastructure. “From our side, we are investigating grave sabotage, “says Finnish National Bureau of Investigation Director Robin Lardot. He also adds, “According to our understanding, an anchor of the vessel that is under investigation has caused the damage.
Undersea Cable Disruption In Baltic Sea Investigated For Possible Sabotage
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Finland's prime minister, Petteri Orpo, said the outage had not affected the country's electricity supplies. However, Reuters reports that the capacity between the countries was reduced from the installed capacity of 1,016 MW to 358 MW.
"The authorities remain vigilant even during Christmas and are investigating the situation," Orpo wrote on X.
Finland prime minister Petteri Orpo
According to Finnish public broadcaster Yle, Estlink 2 was unserviceable for several months earlier this year due to planned maintenance, but the connection was restored in September. Arto Pahkin, Operations Manager of Finnish national electricity transmission operator Fingrid, said the possibility of sabotage cannot be ruled out, adding that an investigation into the matter had been initiated.
Tracking sites showed that Chinese bulk carrier Yi Peng 3 had sailed over the cables around the time they were cut. The Wall Street Journal reported that Western intelligence services believe the ship's Chinese captain was "induced by Russian intelligence" to damage the cables using the vessel's anchor.
Earlier this week, Sweden said that China had denied a request for prosecutors to conduct an investigation on the vessel and that it had left the area.
Russia has said that claims it was involved in the sabotage of undersea cables as retaliation against Western nations aiding Ukraine are "absurd" and "laughable."
[...] NATO is also developing a way of protecting undersea cable sabotage: a fleet of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) that will patrol high-risk naval zones in regions such as the Baltic and Mediterranean.
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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) discovered anchor drag marks on the seabed after mapping it from start to finish. However, Finnish news outlet Helsingin Sanomat reports that the authorities are still looking for the anchor that caused the damage. NBI Detective Chief Inspector Sami Paila says, “So far, a possible anchor detachment point has not been confirmed.”
The investigation focuses on the Eagle S, suspected of dragging its anchor on Christmas Day to cut the Estlink 2 power cable and several other internet and communications cables connecting Finland and Estonia. Authorities have already boarded the ship, but its anchor is reportedly missing. The authorities then sailed the Eagle S into Finland's territorial waters. They moved it to an even more secure anchorage in Svartbäck to facilitate the investigation, with other ships restricted from approaching the ship to maintain security. Its crew has also remained aboard for further questioning, with Finnish Customs authorities also looking into its cargo.
“The vessel’s captain and crew have remained on board and active during the move [from its original stopping point]. Once anchored, we will resume investigative procedures, focusing on whether this ship caused the damage,” said Helsinki Police Superintendent Heikki Porola to Finland’s national broadcasting company Yle.
The investigators discovered anchor drag marks on the seabed just a day after moving the ship. “East of that point, there are several tens of kilometers [of dragging], if we are not talking about almost a hundred kilometers,” says Paila. He added, “The track ends where the ship lifted the anchor chain.”
Because of this, Finland is adding aggravated telecommunications interference to the charges against the Eagle S and its crew. This is in addition to the initial aggravated arson charge and the aggravated regulation offense that Finland customs is investigating regarding the oil cargo it carries.
Sources say the Eagle S is part of Russia’s “shadow fleet,” a collection of poorly maintained ships with murky ownership and registration that the country uses to circumvent sanctions and smuggle its oil exports despite the embargoes.
This is the second such incident in the last two months. In mid-November, a Chinese vessel, Yi Peng 3, is suspected of cutting undersea cables connecting Lithuania to Sweden and Germany to Finland. Underwater cameras also revealed drag marks that coincided with the vessel's maneuvers, further proving that it dragged its anchor to cause the damage.
Related:
• Undersea Power Cable Connecting Finland And Estonia Experiences Outage Capacity Reduced To 35%
• Chinese Ship's Crew Suspected of Deliberately Dragging Anchor for 100 Miles to Cut Baltic Cables
An undersea fiber optic cable between Latvia and Sweden was damaged on Sunday, likely as a result of external influence, Latvia said, triggering an investigation by local and NATO maritime forces in the Baltic Sea:
"We have determined that there is most likely external damage and that it is significant," Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina told reporters following an extraordinary government meeting.
Latvia is coordinating with NATO and the countries of the Baltic Sea region to clarify the circumstances, she said separately in a post on X.
Latvia's navy earlier on Sunday said it had dispatched a patrol boat to inspect a ship and that two other vessels were also subject to investigation.
From Zerohedge's coverage:
Over the past 18 months, three alarming incidents have been reported in which commercial ships traveling to or from Russian ports are suspected of severing undersea cables in the Baltic region.
Washington Post recently cited Western officials who said these cable incidents are likely maritime accidents - not sabotage by Russia and/or China.
Due to all the cable severing risks, intentional and unintentional, a report from late November via TechCrunch [linked by submitter] said Meta planned a new "W" formation undersea cable route around the world to "avoid areas of geopolitical tension."
Related:
- NATO Plans to Build Satellite Links as Backups to Undersea Cables
- Finnish Investigators Discover Anchor Drag Marks of "Almost a Hundred Kilometers" in Cable Case
- Undersea Power Cable Connecting Finland And Estonia Experiences Outage Capacity Reduced To 35%
- Two Undersea Internet Cables Connecting Finland and Sweden to Europe Have Been Cut
(Score: 2, Interesting) by RS3 on Saturday December 28, @09:57PM (1 child)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1elq7lx9qdo [bbc.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday December 29, @12:59AM
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/12/28/germany-says-latest-undersea-cable-cut-a-wake-up-call-a87475 [themoscowtimes.com]
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 28, @10:20PM (2 children)
Not even if it wasn't so obvious the first time.
If they could, they would be doing this same shit to USA or any other country they don't like. I don't know if there's anything to cut between russia and Alaska, other than their own cables and pipes, so.
They already do GPS interference, airial border violations (which they have been doing for decades) and all kinds of sabotage all around Europe and they aren't running out of ideas. Not to mention Ukraine, Georgia, etc etc. + poisoning and dropping their own people out the windows and stirring shit in Africa and so on and so on.
I wouldn't count out some of the weird stuff going on in USA being russians instead of chinese. These kinds of things are what they strive to excel at.
Anyone not seeing what their end game is, which they themselves have stated multiple times, is either wilfully ignorant or plain stupid or an orc.
Unfortunately things are turning worse. Ukraine is really suffering, because they do not get the help they need. If the worst happens, it's going to be bad for all. You think you are safe if you just bend over and take it? Think again.
-----
Slava Ukraini! Slay the orcs!
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Sunday December 29, @05:49PM
No submarine fiber AFAIK
https://www.submarinecablemap.com/ [submarinecablemap.com]
Yes I know it looks like there's a link between Prudhoe and Anadyr but the "Far North Fiber" both does not exist (its a proposed route not installed and probably never will be) and as proposed it actually would have gone from AK to Japan, its just an artifact of how its displayed that it looks like it goes to Russia, and there's a lot of fiber up there so it looks like a bad car wiring diagram.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_North_Fiber [wikipedia.org]
AFAIK submarinecablemap includes imaginary planned routes but does not exclude any known routes, so if there's no route displayed that's because nobody is even considering building one.
Its honestly kind of surprising there's no direct fiber between AK and Russia. Maybe there's some top secret CIA thing who knows.
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Sunday December 29, @06:03PM
I would caution AC that BAU is somewhat more than one major incident per month rising to the level of being reported on subtelforum. Paying attention to a topic and looking for a reason to increase the scope of a war is a localized short term thing, whereas undersea cables getting F-d up happens every couple weeks for the last couple decades and will probably only get worse as more cables are laid, profit margins lower, etc.
https://subtelforum.com/category/cable-faults-maintenance/ [subtelforum.com]
Back when I worked at a telco a long time ago, a resource like subtelforum would have been nice to have, we had to rely on legacy media to explain cable cuts to customers. "Yes, we do have a fiber splice truck, several in fact, but they're actually commercial service vans, not boats, and the fiber cut is in the Atlantic 2000 miles from our nearest van so ...". Customer's get strange ideas about what runs on "our" lines vs what runs on lines we lease from other companies. No, we did not actually bury our own dedicated fiber from the midwest all the way to Ireland for your little slow speed data circuit, no. Sales may have told them we did, LOL.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday December 28, @10:33PM (3 children)
With submissions taking 3 days to work their way to the front page, the hot stories are totally cold when they're posted.
The oil tanker has since been seized [nytimes.com] by Finland FWIW.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Saturday December 28, @10:46PM (2 children)
We are not trying to do 'hot' stories - we are not competing with other news sites.
You have TV, newspapers and the rest of the internet for your news.
We are providing topics for discussion.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday December 28, @10:49PM (1 child)
I'm not bitching or criticizing by the way 🙂 It's just really weird to regularly read developing stories from the past on SN's front page. I'm just saying with that kind of turnaround time, SN stories would be less weird if they were less topical.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by janrinok on Saturday December 28, @11:03PM
There are only 2 of us keeping the story queues going. We have to work a day or two ahead to have at least some time off over the holiday period.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Frosty Piss on Sunday December 29, @12:17AM (5 children)
Russia is fully aware that The West knows who is responsible. This and the previous anchor dragging were done by disposable ships not far from the scrap heap. It's a message to NATO "Don't get too involved with Ukraine", it's a bully threat from a second rate mobster who's starting to get scared. Russia is being pushed to their limits with Ukraine, what with Ukrainian attacks far inside Russia, they couldn't even prop up their puppet in Syria, and other Russian puppets will fall.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Sunday December 29, @01:05AM (4 children)
Just about any nation with a competent Navy can make mysterious holes appear beneath the waterline of cargo ships with relative ease. If they don't mind being seen just before it happens they can also launch torpedos from supersonic fighter jets.
Instead of threatening foreign countries with statehood, I would be issuing an ultimatum: one more cable cut "accident" and those waters will be closed to shipping, except for specifically approved carriers.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 29, @04:27AM (3 children)
It's thousands of ships you are proposing to stop, many from the 'dark fleet' with difficult to trace ownership, see for example this from early 2024, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/issue-brief/russias-growing-dark-fleet-risks-for-the-global-maritime-order/ [atlanticcouncil.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 29, @11:43AM (2 children)
So what. A policy of defaulting to denying passage is easy enough to enforce. If you want your ship to go through there you apply for a permit or you become part of an artificial reef.
If you want to hide your dark ownership, then sail round the long way. I have zero problems with governments forcing transparency and accountability on large corporations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 29, @04:08PM (1 child)
> ... or you become part of an artificial reef.
Bluster is easy, Putin does it all the time. But stopping the "dark fleet" is not that simple--most of them are older tankers moving oil from the Russian Baltic ports to India and other Russian allies. If you sink them you risk major oil spills and huge environmental clean up.
(Score: 3, Touché) by fraxinus-tree on Sunday December 29, @07:23PM
You don't sink them. You tow them, pump the oil out and schedule them for scrapping.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday December 29, @05:40PM (3 children)
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/finland-investigates-outage-undersea-power-link-estonia-finnish-pm-says-2024-12-25/ [reuters.com]
says
"reducing its available capacity to 358 megawatts (MW) from an installed capacity of 1,016 MW."
I'm not being picky about a minor typo, this observation of the typo is the result of I thought the numbers looked funny. OK they probably have three-phase AC or three DC systems and two phases or two conductors are down, but that number does not look like a third:
358 (on one phase) * 3 = 1074 MW Not 1016MW, not 1106MW.
Huh.
My guess is they are thermal limited and can run a single phase a little hotter than if they run all the phases at once. You'd think if they dropped 2 of 3 AC phases or 2 of 3 DC conductors they'd be running 339 MW not 358 MW. Its only 5% off, not a huge amount but enough to notice the peculiarity.
I just thought that was interesting from an EE perspective.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Sunday December 29, @06:00PM (2 children)
Estlink 1 and Estlink 2 are different cables, following different undersea routes to different locations on land at each end. The one that was recently cut is Estlink 2.
Estlink 1 was built in 2006 by ABB, and is a 150 kV DC line capable of 350 MW, linking to Finland's grid at 400 kV AC and Estonia's grid at 330 kV AC before/after conversion either way.
Estlink 2 was built in 2014 by Nexans and Siemens, operates at 450 kV DC with a capacity of 650 MW, connecting to the same 400 and 330 kV AC grids, but via different conversion stations than Estlink 1.
With the 650 MW of capacity from Estlink 2 offline, the remaining Estlink 1 tie between Finland and Estonia is only able to transfer 350 MW.
Which part didn't you understand?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday December 29, @06:07PM (1 child)
That they're separate cables, LOL. They're only 5% off of one third so my immediate guess was they lost 2 of 3 phases or conductors, but something's off with the math for that because it's not precisely 1/3. A mere numerological coincidence that's all.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Sunday December 29, @06:34PM
Ah, yes... and the confusion is complicated slightly because they're pushing those cables that extra 1-2% above their original "nameplate" design capacity...
If it were an AC cable though, any damage caused by something like an anchor drag would take out all three phases, they're run in one physical cable bundle, not separate cables for each phase...
A typical submarine AC cable cross-section looks something like this. [supergrid-institute.com]
A typical submarine DC cable typically looks something like this, [escaeu.org] unless it is a SWER (Single Wire, Earth Return) cable (which Estlink is not,) in which case it wouldn't have the return conductor sections in it, only the main conductor, any fiber and whatnot and the various layers of insulation, structure and sheathing.
They obviously often include a bunch of fiber optic cables in the bundle as well when they build the cable, since you're laying a giant pipe-like-thing across the seabed, you might as well throw everything but the kitchen sink in there if it is reasonably economical. :)