China has admitted for the first time that the Hong Kong-flagged container ship Newnew Polar Bear was responsible for the damage to a gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea in October.
An official investigation into the incident has determined that it was an accident. South China Morning Post he wrote on Monday, citing a Chinese-language government report.
The Balticconnector gas pipeline was closed on October 8 after pressure dropped rapidly and the operator became aware of the leak. Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said an “external activity” was the reason for the break in the connection between Finland and Estonia and the damage to two telecommunications cables.
Alf van Beem/Wikimedia Commons
The Finnish National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) recovered a six-ton anchor nearby and identified the 169-meter-long Newnew Polar Bear as the likely culprit.
According to the Post’s report, China has informed Estonia and Finland of the results of its investigation.
The document “cannot be used as evidence in an Estonian criminal investigation,” said a spokesman for the Estonian prosecutor’s office. A spokesman for the Finnish National Information Office declined to comment on China’s findings, but stressed that its own investigations were still ongoing.
However, both governments said they had sent requests for legal assistance to Beijing.
“To comply with the request for legal aid, the Chinese authorities can conduct the investigation themselves or involve Estonian investigators, but all activities carried out on Chinese territory must comply with local legislation,” Kair Kungas, head of the public relations department of the Estonian Prosecutor’s Office, was quoted as saying.
He added that China had not yet responded to the request.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to NewsweekPlease leave a comment.
The EU members said there was evidence that the damage caused by the Newnew Polar Bear‘s anchor as it dragged along the seabed.
This could have happened without crew members even noticing, says Magnus Winberg, a lecturer at the Aboa Mare Maritime Academy in Turku, Finland. “If a ship is moving at 10 to 12 knots, the crews of passing vessels have no reason to get out their binoculars and see if it is dragging its anchor chain,” he told local media in November.
Are Piel, an official at the Estonian Transport Ministry, told local news channel ERR that anchor dragging was a “very rare event.” “Either the ship broke down or something broke in a storm,” he said, adding that this could not be ruled out.
The 77-kilometer-long, two-lane Balticconector pipeline was restarted in April. It supplies Finland with vital natural gas from the Latvian underground storage facility Incukalns.
