Nordic TSO quartet takes steps to bolster security cooperation

Given the security challenges after multiple offshore energy incidents, including the Nord Stream pipeline explosions in 2022, four transmission system operators (TSOs) of the Nordic region have decided to take measures into their own hands and strengthen their cooperation amid rising geopolitical tensions and ongoing Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza conflicts.

The cooperation in the security and preparedness arenas between the Nordic TSOs’ security organizations intensified in the spring of 2022 and has now been formalized as the Nordic Security Group (NordSec) under the Nordic CEO.

The director general of Sweden’s Svenska kraftnät and the CEOs of Norway’s Statnett, Denmark’s Energinet, and Finland’s Fingrid made the move to fortify the security cooperation of the Nordic TSOs by making it stronger.

The two major incidents, which came in September 2022, when four gas leaks were found on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, two in Sweden’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and two in the Danish territory, laid bare the need to boost security in the region’s energy sector.

This was illustrated further in July 2023, when Germany, Sweden, and Denmark revealed in a letter to the UN Security Council their findings, which indicated traces of subsea explosives in samples taken from a yacht that might have been used to transport the explosives that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea.

The threats to subsea energy infrastructure in Europe did not end after North Stream pipelines were damaged, as hammered home by a rapture of the Balticconnector gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia in early October 2023.

As a result, the pipeline was shut down after seismic signals were recorded in its vicinity, indicating a possible explosion had occurred around the time a pressure drop was observed approximately 40 kilometers north of Paldiski, Estonia, close to where the Balticconnector pipeline crosses the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.

Several steps to address the potential perils lying in wait entail the joint exercise in the Baltic Sea region of the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) – a multilateral defense cooperation framework led by Great Britain and formed by ten countries.

In addition, six North Sea countries took steps to raise the cooperation bar on the security of energy and telecommunications underwater infrastructure in April 2024 by signing off on a joint declaration to cooperate in the area related to the protection of critical subsea energy and telecommunication infrastructure across the North Sea.

The following day a similar declaration was inked by eight Baltic Sea countries to pool resources on safeguarding critical offshore energy infrastructure in the region. These eight countries combined efforts to fortify offshore and subsea infrastructure against activities that may jeopardize energy assets and supply.

The German Federal Ministry of Digital and Transport recently co-funded north.io’s €3.5 million Argus big data project to protect critical subsea Infrastructure through the mFUND innovation initiative.

Recently, a six-nation initiative called SeaSEC was launched in December 2023 to safeguard the existing subsea infrastructure. The step, taken by the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, is expected to help develop new techniques and enable governments to monitor energy infrastructure in the North Sea and Baltic Sea up to a depth of 30 meters.

Sander van Luik from SeaSEC underlined the common security concerns in September 2024 and pointed out the necessity for cooperation in such a big area, not just the civil-military kind but also international, to address the issues and urgency surrounding them.

With all these security threats in mind, the Nordic TSOs created the NordSec working group on October 9, 2024, to strengthen cooperation and information exchange between each other and to facilitate cooperation before and during crises where more than one Nordic TSO is affected.