Finnish investigators on Tuesday said that they believed an anchor of a Chinese container ship was dislodged and caused the damage to the undersea Balticconnector gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia in the Baltic Sea earlier this month.
The Finnish National Bureau of Investigation said that it had evidence and data pointing to the Hong Kong-flagged cargo vessel Newnew Polar Bear as the culprit in damaging the pipeline running across the Gulf of Finland.
Bureau Detective Superintendent Risto Lohi, who heads the investigation, told a news conference that a 1.5m-to-4m-wide dragging trail on the seabed leads to the point of damage in the gas pipeline.
Photo: Reuters
That trail is believed to have been caused by a 6-tonne anchor that the Finnish Navy retrieved late on Monday.
“There are traces in the [anchor] which indicate that it has been in contact with the gas pipeline,” Lohi said, citing data from an expert analysis.
Whether the pipeline damage was intentional, unintentional or caused by “bad seafaring” is subject of the next phase in the probe, officials said.
On Oct. 8, Finnish and Estonian gas system operators said they noted an unusual drop in pressure in the pipeline after which they shut down the gas flow.
The 77km pipeline that runs between the Finnish coastal town of Inkoo and the Estonian port of Paldiski had been mechanically damaged in the Finnish economic zone and had shifted from its original position where it was buried in the seabed.
Last week, Finnish officials named the Newnew Polar Bear the prime suspect, as the course and positioning of the 169m ship in the Baltic Sea coincided with the time and place of the gas pipeline damage.
Recent photographs published on social media of the Chinese vessel, which called at the port of St Petersburg in Russia during its Baltic Sea voyage, show the vessel is missing one of its anchors.
The Marine Traffic Web site showed that the ship was sailing on Russian northern waters and is presumably heading back to China via the Northern Sea Route.
Finnish investigators said they have tried several times to contact the ship’s captain, but without success and are now cooperating with Chinese officials on the case.
A Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson said at a regular government media briefing on Monday that Beijing has called for an “objective, fair and professional” investigation into the damage to the Balticconnector, and added that the Chinese vessel was sailing normally at the time.
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