Finland Investigates Another Suspicious Act In Undersea Power Cable Outage

Authorities in Finland are investigating the sudden failure of the Estlink-2 undersea power cable, which connects Finland and Estonia.

The outage occurred at 10:26 GMT on December 25 and reduced the cable’s capacity from 1,016 megawatts (MW) to just 358 MW, according to Finnish grid operator Fingrid.

At the time of the failure, electricity was flowing from Finland to Estonia at a rate of 658 MW. Despite this, both Finland and Estonia confirmed that their electricity supplies were not affected.

Estonian operator Elering said that there was sufficient spare capacity to meet Estonia’s power needs.

Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said that authorities, including the police and Border Guard, are actively investigating the incident.

Officials are looking into whether a foreign vessel may have been involved, but no specific ship has been identified yet. Orpo assured the public that even during Christmas, authorities remain vigilant in addressing such matters.

The outage has raised concerns about the security of critical undersea infrastructure in the Baltic region. In recent years, the area has seen multiple incidents involving power cables, gas pipelines, and telecom links.

In November, two undersea data cables were severed- one between Finland and Germany and another between Lithuania and Sweden. German authorities suspected sabotage but provided no conclusive evidence.

Similarly, the Nord Stream pipelines, which transported natural gas from Russia to Germany, were damaged by underwater explosions in September 2022, which were also labelled as sabotage.

The Estlink-2 cable has experienced issues in the past. Earlier this year, it was offline for repairs due to damage caused by a short circuit, which was attributed to its complex positioning.

Although sabotage is a possibility, authorities are also considering a technical malfunction or accidents as possible causes of the current failure.

The Estlink-2 interconnector remains offline, leaving the older Estlink-1 cable, with a capacity of 358 MW, as the only operational link between Finland and Estonia.

Investigations are underway to find the exact cause of the outage.

References: Reuters, AP News

Source: Maritime Shipping News