‘Blind underwater’: Energy industry needed to improve North Sea seabed security, OEEC panel says

Security is a topic that has expanded in the last couple of years, bringing new worries to Europe. With a number of incidents occurring in European seas that harmed subsea (energy) infrastructure, seabed security made its way onto one of the first places on the energy security chart. A panel at Offshore Energy Exhibition & Conference (OEEC) agreed that no one knows what is going on below the North Sea surface and threats are undoubtedly incoming, thereby prevention needs to be accelerated by finding new ways of using what is already available.

Jeroen de Graaf, Director at IRO and NMT – set to merge into one as of 2025, Sander van Luik, Program Manager of Defense, Safety and Security at TNO and The Seabed Security Experimentation Center (SeaSEC), and Paul Flos, Program Director of International Naval Materiel Cooperation at the Dutch Ministry of Defense, took the stage at the Seabed security panel discussion on November 26 at OEEC in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to discuss what is needed to ensure everything is safe and secure.

The session, powered by IRO, the Association of Dutch Suppliers in the Offshore Energy Industry, follows the one held in Stavanger, Norway, in August on board the hydrographic survey vessel HNLMS Snellius.

The problem that was the centerpiece is the protection of North Sea undersea infrastructure, especially in the Netherlands, which has about 3,000 kilometers of gas pipeline it is very much dependent on, in addition to the increasing number of offshore wind farms.

According to Van Luik, with the expansion of this capacity, the Dutch and other countries’ dependency on the North Sea is increasing tremendously and growing at a very high pace, with society as we know it at risk. Consequently, this means there is a big dependency on the Navy and other organizations, as well as the private sector which is also crucial, to keep everything safe.

“It sounds like a big statement, but we truly are very much dependent on energy to make everything go around each day. Without electricity, society as we know it will turn to a grind very, very quickly. So we need to protect everything that is needed to secure this energy supply. And unfortunately, we sort of missed the part that was out at sea.”

The Nord Stream incident was a wake-up call, showing that big vulnerability is present. One of the first questions – still requiring an answer – is who is responsible and who is going to be doing something about it, is it the asset owners, those owning the pipelines or cable, the navy, or maybe the coast guard or police?

Knowledge of what everyone is doing and how they can contribute to security in a fast and most efficient way is needed, making sure that people who are most knowledgeable about some part of the puzzle are being activated and that all pieces know how to work together. The Coast Guard is seen as one of the central nodes in that whole system.

What is going on under there needs to be understood, Van Luik says: “We have seen the activity of Russian ships in the North Sea that are not there by coincidence, just over our main power lines and pipelines. What they are doing is charting everything they need to know to hurt us in a very bad way in a conflict that we hope will never start. In preventing that conflict, we need to protect our power supply. And that is something that we need information about. It starts with situational awareness, to use a military term.”

The establishment of SeaSEC occurred as Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands have the same problem and the same kind of large dependency on energy coming from sea, as both the Baltic Sea and North Sea are mostly shallow, meaning they are accessible for anything or anyone that wants to attack. The six-nation collaboration is focused on knowledge sharing, facilitating the problem. In addition, the collaboration was set up to make use of already available civilian equipment to help get an understanding of the underwater world.

According to Flos, it is not easy to say which challenge is harder, the world becoming more turbulent or the North Sea becoming more important: “It is omnipotent. We as the Ministry of Defense, and complete NATO, are focusing on the major conflict in 2027. We need companies which we normally never work with to give bright ideas and the right products which can help us win our wars.”

“The world is not going in a proper direction, it is not getting safer. We have a big focus on the North Sea. That is a prime sea and also the stuff underwater there. As we realized as navy, we are blind underwater at the moment. We do not know what is going on there and we have no faintest idea. Above water it is quite OK, on the water it is quite OK, and underwater is not OK.”

Flos notes that total, 100% security does not exist, however, the Netherlands is quite well defended, but it might not be enough in one stage, so getting information on what is happening underwater is necessary.

De Graaf says that other ways of using what is already available need to be thought through, as well as how to innovate the industry and products for the security of the seabed and all critical infrastructure and bring them into contact with the Ministry of Defense.

Speaking about what the industry needs from the military, one of the answers is standardization and new standards: “Do we need new standards? We probably will, but finding out how to find the balance between overprotecting and not spending too much money on the other hand, we will probably come down to writing new standards that the government will use, the ones that are issuing your permits for building new infrastructure at sea. New standards, yes, they are coming your way,” Van Luik said.

He further notes that although safety and security are different, solutions that were developed for safety can also be used in the security department: “This is exactly what we are talking about, how can we make all the technologies that have already been developed work to secure the stuff that we need to secure. Do not innovate by making new technology, but innovate by finding new ways of using what is already there. We are talking about acceleration and this is the quickest way of getting ahead.”

Flos concludes that everything is going in the proper direction, but still takes time due to reasons such as certain security and proper procurement rules, learning how to work together, sustainability and affordability, standards and classifications. All this that needs to be sped up can be done through SeaSEC.

“Freedom is very valuable to us. It is the whole society which needs to contribute to keep that level of freedom we have at the moment. There are two options, either we are going to do it or we are going to learn Russian. There is nothing in between,” Flos said.

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