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Repairing Finland-Estonia Gas Pipeline May Take Months
Repairing a subsea gas pipeline connecting Finland and Estonia that
was shut on Sunday due to a suspected leak could take months or more
if a puncture is confirmed, Finnish gas system operator Gasgrid said.
The Balticconnector pipeline suffered a sharp drop in pressure, and
work is ongoing to confirm the exact location and cause of the outage
in the coming days, the company said in a statement.
"If it appears that the unusual pressure drop observed in the morning
of Oct. 8...is due to a leak (that) caused damage to the pipe, repair
work may take at least several months depending on nature of the
damage," Gasgrid said.
The valves of the pipeline have been shut to prevent more gas from
escaping.
The 77 km (48 miles) Balticconnector pipeline between Inkoo in Finland
and Paldiski in Estonia crosses the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the
Baltic Sea that stretches eastwards into Russian waters and ends at
the port of St Petersburg.
In 2022, the larger Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea
between Russia and Germany were damaged by explosions that authorities
have said were deliberate acts of sabotage.
Sunday's drop in pressure was registered just before 2 a.m. local time
(2300 GMT) by Gasgrid in Finland and Estonian gas transmission system
operator Elering.
Hourly data from Elering showed a sudden drop in pipeline pressure at
2300 GMT from 34.5 bar to around 12 bar and then a further decline one
hour later to just 6 bar, suggesting the contents had leaked into the
ocean.
Unlike the blasts that destroyed Nord Stream, which were detected by
earthquake measurement stations, there was no immediate sign of
seismic activity near Balticconnect, according to data from Norway's
Norsar and the University of Helsinki.
The pipeline, which can export in either direction depending on where
demand is greatest, was transporting a volume of around 30 gigawatt
hours of gas per day from Finland to Estonia at the time of the
incident, Gasgrid said earlier.
https://gcaptain.com/repairing-finland-estonia-gas-pipeline-may-take-months/
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