Ghost Ships and Sabotage: The Unresolved Mystery of the Nord Stream Pipeline Incident
In the early hours of September 26, 2022, an unthinkable event occurred in the Baltic Sea. The Nord Stream pipelines, which supplied over 50% of the natural gas to Europe directly from Russia, began pouring up to 400,000 tons of methane into the atmosphere. Seismometers from Germany, Finland, Denmark, and other countries immediately launched an investigation and discovered two leaks sabotaged with explosives. An allied F-16 was dispatched to discover what had occurred, but no vessels or submarines were ever spotted. As tensions rose between Russia and the West to assign blame, a satellite data monitoring firm made an astonishing discovery. With their Automatic Identification System trackers turned off, two large ships were spotted around the leak sites before the explosions. The ships then vanished into thin air, and it was up to satellite images to find them and hunt them down.
The Nord Stream pipelines, also known as the Serebryanka or Nord Stream pipelines, are a pair of offshore natural gas pipelines that run under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany. They were named Nord Stream 1 and 2. Nord Stream 1, or NS1, runs from Vyborg, Northwestern Russia, near Finland, while NS2 originates in Ust-Luga, close to Estonia. The two pipelines end in Lubmin, northeastern Germany, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Each of the pipelines comprises two pipes with a diameter of 1,220 millimeters and a length of 1,200 kilometers. NS1 and NS2 have the combined capacity of 110 billion cubic meters per year of natural gas.
The Nord Stream project began in 1997 after Russian company Gazprom and Finnish oil company Neste partnered and created the North Transgas Oil to build and operate a gas pipeline from Russia to Northern Germany across the Baltic. The first pipe was finished in May 2011 and was followed by the second in October 2012. Almost a decade later, Russia supplied nearly 50% of the natural gas imported by the European Union (EU). Construction began in late 2011 to expand Nord Stream 2 and was completed in 2021 but did not enter service after U.S President Donald Trump mentioned that Nord Stream 2 could turn Europe into Russia’s hostage. Consequently, the U.S placed sanctions on any company assisting Russia with the pipeline.
In December 2020, President Joe Biden made public his stance against the opening of Nord Stream 2 but lifted the sanctions to maintain positive relations with Europe. During the last months of 2021, Russian military personnel began amassing at the borders of Ukraine for what President Vladimir Putin and his ministers called a simple military exercise between Russian forces. Tensions rose rapidly between Ukraine, Western Europe, the United States, and Russia while the military buildup increased. NATO and Ukraine prepared for conflict. In early February, President Biden warned the U.S would end Nord Stream if Russia invaded Ukraine as it had done in 2014. Finally, on February 24, 2022, Russia launched a special military operation to take over all of Ukraine.
During the ensuing diplomatic disputes and Putin’s threats to stop the flow of natural gas through Nord Stream, significant leaks suddenly erupted in the Nord Stream gas pipelines. Seismometers from the Geological Survey of Denmark in Bornholm detected two unexpected spikes. Over four hundred thousand tons of methane were poured into the atmosphere in hours. The first wave was detected at 2:03 am with a magnitude of 2.3. The second wave was detected at 7:03 PM with a magnitude of 2.1. Other German, Finnish, Swedish, and Norwegian seismometers detected the same seismic data, and officials immediately concluded it was an act of sabotage. The seismic data gathered was characteristic of underwater explosions, not natural events or pipe failures.
European authorities immediately launched several investigations to find the perpetrators of the gross sabotage of the pipelines. Some independent journalists and news outlets quickly blamed Russia and Putin for sabotaging their pipelines. Nevertheless, they were shut down as other arguments explained that Russia had nothing to win by destroying the only means of leverage it had to parley with the West for the ongoing war against Ukraine. Furthermore, the pipelines had been built by Kremlin-controlled Gazprom and were valued in billions of dollars. It seemed unlikely the Russian government would do so. Other alleged analysts pointed out the sabotage may have been conducted by pro-Ukrainian personnel that sought to turn all of Western Europe against Russia. As for President Putin, he blamed the West and especially the CIA and the U.S government for sabotage. The Kremlin responded that allegations of Russian responsibility were nonsense, claiming that Washington was motivated to destroy Nord Stream to sell more liquefied natural gas to Europe. Putin added, “The sanctions were not enough for the Anglo-Saxons; they moved on to sabotage.” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said that it was unthinkable that other Europeans had begun investigations without the participation of Russia, deeming it unacceptable and shameful.
While theories and investigations continued across Europe, the satellite data monitoring firm SpaceKnow published relevant information linked to the ongoing mystery of the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines. In early November 2022, Jerry Javornicky, the CEO and co-founder of SpaceKnow, took a surprising amount of new information to the web that changed the current narrative. The company had gathered data about two large ships spotted near the leak sites days before the incident. The analysis provided to Wired showed the two large vessels, measuring between 95 to 130 meters, with their trackers off. These two “dark ships” passed relatively close to the leaks of Nord Stream 2. Javornicky stated, “We have detected some dark ships, meaning vessels that were of a significant size that were passing through that area of interest. They had their beacons off, meaning there was no information about their movement, and they were trying to keep their location information and general information hidden from the world.”
SpaceKnow made the discovery by comparing and analyzing high-quality photographs taken by different satellites. The information obtained about the two ships was then shared with NATO, who later confirmed it had been received and would analyze it thoroughly. SpaceKnow explained to Wired the process employed to detect the ships. The company gathered over 90 days of archived satellite images of areas surrounding the leaks. The photographs compiled came from different satellites. Once collected, SpaceKnow used 38 specific algorithms and machine learning to detect particular objects within them, such as military and merchant vessels. SpaceKnow created a series of polygons near the leak sites. The smallest of them was over 400 square meters and directly covered the blast area of the Nord Stream pipes. In total, 25 ships passed through the area in the weeks before the explosions, from simple cargo ships to larger vessels. 23 had their AIS or Automatic Identification System turned on. The other two ships had them turned off, and these were precisely the two dark ships that were last seen near the site before the leaks provoked by the explosives were used to damage the Nord Stream pipes.
According to international law, every large ship must be equipped with the Automatic Identification System and have it turned on at all times. This is mandatory to prevent collisions between vessels and help them navigate with the necessary precautions. AIS is a shipboard broadcast system that functions like a transponder, operating in the VHF maritime band and capable of handling over 4,500 reports a minute. It was created to broadcast the vessel’s name, direction of travel, location, speed, size, and other relevant data that helps vessels avoid mishaps or help each other in case of a disaster.
Although ships are required to have AIS turned on at all times, some go dark to commit illegal activities such as illegal fishing in protected areas or zones where endangered species live. Nevertheless, there are some cases in which vessels turn off the system, as with military ships on a classified operation. Yet another reason for a ship to have AIS disabled could be a malfunction. However, for two ships to go dark in the Baltic Sea, one of the zones with the largest commercial traffic worldwide, is unusual and dangerous to say the least. SpaceKnow managed to detect the ships using SAR or Synthetic Aperture Radar images acquired directly from satellites. After bouncing radio waves off the ground, images are created with the radio waves from SAR, which is extremely useful for detecting ships because it shows detections from metal objects. Additionally, SAR can also identify a ship’s latitude and longitude coordinates and speed. SAR images shared with Wired show the vessels as glowing objects near the explosion site to the Nord Stream.
SpaceKnow has explicitly said that it is not making statements if the ships are Russian or otherwise, as they lack that information and have only detected the vessels that were spotted near the area. For now, the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipes remains a mystery to be solved. As we delve deeper into this mystery, it’s clear that the stakes are high, and the implications are far-reaching.
