NORTH SEA, Denmark (AP) — Appearing first as a dot on the horizon, the remote Nini oil field on Europe’s rugged North Sea slowly comes into view from a helicopter.
Used to extract fossil fuels, the field is now getting a second lease on life as a means of permanently storing planet-warming carbon dioxide beneath the seabed.
In a process that almost reverses oil extraction, chemical giant INEOS plans to inject liquefied CO2 deep down into depleted oil reservoirs, 1,800 meters (5,900 feet) beneath the seabed.
The Associated Press made a rare visit to the Siri platform, close to the unmanned Nini field, the final stage in INEOS’ carbon capture and storage efforts, named Greensand Future.
When the project begins commercial operations next year, Greensand is expected to become the European Union’s first fully-operational offshore CO2 storage site.
Environmentalists say carbon capture and storage, also known as CCS, has a role to play in dealing with climate change but should not be used as an excuse by industries to avoid cutting emissions.
Future plans
Mads Gade, chief executive of INEOS Energy Europe, says it will initially begin storing 400,000 tons (363,000 metric tons) of CO2 per year, scaling up to as much as 8 million tons (7.3 million metric tons) annually by 2030.
“Denmark has the potential to actually store more than several hundred years of our own emissions,” says Gade. “We are able to create an industry where we can support Europe in actually storing a lot of the CO2 here.”
Greensand has struck deals with Danish biogas facilities to bury their captured carbon emissions into the Nini field’s depleted reservoirs.
A “CO2 terminal” that temporarily stores the liquefied gas is being built at the Port of Esbjerg, on the western coast of the Danish Jutland peninsula.
A purpose-built carrier vessel, dubbed “Carbon Destroyer 1,” is under construction in the Netherlands.
Climate solution
Proponents of carbon capture technology say it is a climate solution because it can remove the greenhouse gas that is the biggest driver of climate change and bury it deep underground.
They note the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s top body of climate scientists, has said the technology is a tool in the fight against global warming.
The EU has proposed developing at least 250 million tons (227 million metric tons) of CO2 storage per year by 2040, as part of plans to reach “net zero” emissions by 2050.
Gade says carbon capture and storage is one of the best means of cutting emissions.
“We don’t want to deindustrialize Europe,” he said. “We want to have actually a few instruments to decarbonize instead.”
Experts at Denmark’s geological survey say Greensand sandstone rock is well-suited for storing the liquefied CO2. Almost a third of the rock volume is made up of tiny cavities, said Niels Schovsbo, senior researcher at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.
“We found that there (are) no reactions between the reservoir and the injected CO2. And we find that the seal rock on top of that has sufficient capacity to withhold the pressure that is induced when we are storing CO2 in the subsurface,” added Schovsbo.
“These two methods makes it a perfect site for storage right there.”
Limitations and criticism
But while there are many carbon capture facilities around the world, the technology is far from scale, sometimes uses fossil fuel energy in its operations and captures just a tiny fraction of worldwide emissions.
The Greensand project aims to bury up to 8 million tons (7.3 million metric tons) of CO2 a year by 2030. The International Energy Agency says nearly 38 billion tons (34.5 billion metric tons) of CO2 were emitted globally last year.
Environmental campaigners say CCS has been used as an excuse by industries to delay cutting emissions.
“We could have CCS on those very few sectors where emissions are truly difficult or impossible to abate,” said Helene Hagel, head of climate and environmental policy at Greenpeace Denmark.
“But when you have all sectors in society almost saying, we need to just catch the emissions and store them instead of reducing emissions — that is the problem.”
While the chemical giant ramps up carbon storage efforts, it is also hoping to begin development at another previously unopened North Sea oil field.
“The footprint we deliver from importing energy against producing domestic or regional oil and gas is a lot more important for the transition instead of importing with a higher footprint,” said Gade, defending the company’s plans.
“We see a purpose in doing this for a period while we create a transition for Europe.”
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One is a king who has spent most of his adult life campaigning for bold action on global warming — but is now bound by ancient convention to stick to his government’s skeptical script.
The second is a prime minister who just scaled back Britain’s net zero ambitions and wants to “max out” fossil fuel production at home — and stands accused by former colleagues of being “uninterested” in environmental policies.
And the third? A former prime minister — now the U.K. foreign secretary — who once pledged to lead the “greenest government ever,” but then grew tired of what he called “the green crap” … and is already showing signs of overshadowing his new boss.
All three — King Charles III, Rishi Sunak, and David Cameron — are due to descend on the United Nations climate conference, COP28, which starts in Dubai next week, rounding off a year set to be the hottest ever recorded. (Sunak and the king are already confirmed to attend, while Cameron is due to do so in the coming days.)
The unlikely trio, each jostling for their place on the world stage, are symbolic of a wider identity crisis for the U.K. heading into the summit.
The country staked a claim as a world leader on climate when it hosted COP26 just two years ago. But it is now viewed with uncertainty by allies pushing for stronger action on global warming, following Sunak’s embrace of North Sea oil and gas and his retreat on some key domestic net zero targets.
“There is a lot of confusion about what the U.K. is going to do this year,” said one European diplomat, granted anonymity to give a candid assessment ahead of the summit.
“It raises the question, which team are they on? I think we’ll need to find out during COP.”
Green king, Blue Prime Minister
One of the key moments for the U.K. will come early in the conference, when Charles delivers an opening speech at the World Climate Action Summit of world leaders, the grand curtain raiser on a fortnight of talks.
Sunak is expected to fly in the same day to deliver his own speech later in the session.
Rishi Sunak speaks at COP26 in Glasgow | Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
At least Charles has been allowed to attend the summit this year. In 2022, then Prime Minister Liz Truss advised the king against travelling to Egypt for COP27.
But anyone looking for signs of friction between Sunak and the climate-conscious king will be unlikely to find them in the text of Charles’ address.
Speeches by the monarch are signed off by No. 10 Downing Street and this one will be no different, said one minister, granted anonymity to discuss interactions between the PM’s office and Buckingham Palace.
That’s not to say tensions don’t exist. Just don’t expect the king to overstep the constitutional ground rules, said Charles’ friend and biographer, the broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby.
“I can only imagine that he must be intensely frustrated that the government has granted licenses in the North Sea,” Dimbleby told POLITICO. “Whatever the actual practical implications of the drilling in terms of combating climate change, it will not send a great message to the world from a nation that claims moral leadership on the issue.”
But Charles finds himself in “a unique position,” Dimbleby added.
“He is the only head of state who has a very long track record on insisting that climate change is a threat to the future of humanity … He speaks with great authority — but of course on terms from which the government will not dissent, because he has an overriding commitment, regardless of his own views, to abide by the constitutional obligations of the head of state in this country.”
Others see the speech as a major test for Charles.
“This is one of the most significant speeches he’ll make as king,” said Craig Prescott, a constitutional expert and lecturer in law at the Royal Holloway university.
Prescott noted the speech will be watched closely for clues as to how Charles maintains “political impartiality while pursuing the environmental issue — striking the right balance.”
“There will be some to-ing and fro-ing between Downing Street and the Palace,” he added. “But fundamentally he has to comply with any advice he gets.”
As is the convention, Downing Street declined to comment on any discussions with Buckingham Palace. The Palace did not respond to a request for comment.
Fossil fuel politics
The king is attending the summit at the invitation of its hosts, the United Arab Emirates — a sign of close ties between the British establishment and the Gulf monarchies presiding over some of the world’s biggest oil and gas-producing countries.
It’s a connection some view as a potential asset for British climate diplomacy.
The then Prince Charles addresses the audience at COP26 | Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images
“Trust between these royal families and institutions could provide the chance to have candid conversations” on issues such as fossil fuel reduction and the need to expand renewable energy supply, said Edward Davey, head of the U.K office of the World Resources Institute, where the king is patron.
“One could imagine those issues being discussed in a respectful way, in a way that perhaps other leaders couldn’t achieve.”
“I think it’s perfectly possible for the sovereign and the PM to both attend a COP and for them both to play a complementary role,” Davey added.
Others are much more skeptical. “[The king] has a lot of close friends in the Middle East who are massive producers of oil,” said Graham Smith, boss of the Republic campaign group, which wants to abolish the British monarchy.
“They can use him as a point of access to the British state because he has direct access to the government, and whatever he says to government is entirely secretive.”
Cameron, meanwhile, has his own close ties to the UAE and — before his return to government — took on a teaching post at New York University Abu Dhabi earlier this year.
Negotiation confusion
The U.K.’s big three will be joined in Dubai by Energy Secretary — and Sunak ally — Claire Coutinho. But the head of the British delegation is a junior minister, Graham Stuart, who does not attend Cabinet.
While the country will be officially arguing — alongside the EU — for a “phase-out of unabated fossil fuels,” Stuart sparked confusion earlier this month when he suggested to MPs that he was not troubled by the distinction between a “phase-out” (a total end to production of fossil fuels, where carbon capture is not applied) and a “phase-down,” the softer language preferred by the summit’s president, UAE national oil company boss Sultan Al-Jaber.
Chris Skidmore, an MP and climate activist in Sunak’s Conservative party, and the author of a government-commissioned report on net zero policy, said Stuart was wrong if he thought the distinction was just “semantics.”
“The fate of the world is resting on a distinction between phase-out and phase-down. But the U.K. finds itself now [unable] to argue for phase-out because it’s joined the phase-down club.
“That in itself puts us in an entirely different strategic position to where we were.”
Climate brain drain
London’s climate diplomatic corps are still well-respected around the world, said the same European diplomat quoted above. Even with Sunak’s loosening of net zero policies, the U.K. is seen to be in the group of countries, alongside the EU, leading the push for strong action on cutting emissions.
And there is a chance Cameron’s appointment will see more effort going into the U.K.’s global reputation on climate, according to Skidmore.
Citizen scientist Pat Stirling checks the quality of the River Wye water in Hay-on-Wye | Darren Staples/AFP via Getty Images
“It was under his premiership that the U.K. played a leading role in helping to get the Paris Agreement [to limit global warming] signed through … It will be interesting to see if he comes to COP and wants to play on the opportunities for the U.K. to demonstrate its climate credentials,” he said.
But the team that pulled off a relatively successful COP26 now has significantly less firepower, said one former U.K. climate official, who warned their efforts risk being undermined by No. 10’s approach to fossil fuels.
“There was a brain drain of experts working on climate, [the sort of] officials that could help hold government to account internally and try to maintain the level of ambition that we needed,” the former official said.
This spring, the U.K. scrapped the dedicated role of climate envoy, held by the experienced diplomat Nick Bridge since 2017. The remaining team of climate diplomats have been left frustrated, the former official said, by changes to domestic climate policy driven by a Downing Street operation fixated with next year’s U.K. general election, without consideration for how they might affect Britain’s negotiating position on the world stage.
“When Sunak gave his speech in September [rolling back some interim green targets], his team didn’t even realize that a U.N. climate action summit was happening in New York,” the former official said. “His team aren’t thinking in this way. For them it’s just about votes and the election.”
The risk, said the European diplomat, is that countries at COP28 pushing for softer targets on fossil fuels — likely to include the Gulf states, China and Russia — could point to Sunak’s statements on a “proportionate, pragmatic” approach to net zero as a reason to ignore the U.K. and its allies when they call for higher ambition.
“This will happen,” the European diplomat said. “They can point to the U.K.’s prime minister and say — ‘Look what the U.K. is doing with its own climate ambitions. So why are you being such a hard-ass about ours?’”
As for Cameron’s potential impact at the FCDO, the European diplomat was skeptical.
“It was a big surprise for everybody, but we’re not sure what he can do,” they said. “Maybe he can call a referendum on the climate?”
The Jan De Nul Group’s Voltaire in waters off China in Dec. 2022. As wind turbines get bigger, the vessels that install them are having to change, too.
Located in the North Sea, over 130 kilometers off England’s northeast coast, the Dogger Bank Wind Farm still has some way to go before it’s fully operational, but the installation and powering up of its first turbine is a major feat in itself.
That’s because GE Vernova’s Haliade-X turbines stand 260 meters tall — that’s higher than San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge — and have blades measuring 107 meters.
Turbine installation at Dogger Bank has required a huge amount of planning and preparation, with the Voltaire — a specialist vessel designed and built by the family-owned Jan De Nul Group — playing a key role.
With a lifting capacity of 3,200 metric tons, the Voltaire — named after the 18th-century French philosopher — will have installed a total of 277 Haliade-X turbines when its work is complete.
This image, from Dec. 2022, shows Jan De Nul Group’s Voltaire in China. A specialist installation vessel, the Voltaire has a lifting capacity of over 3,000 metric tons.
VCG | Visual China Group | Getty Images
Described by Dogger Bank as the “largest offshore jack-up installation vessel ever built,” in many ways, it’s the pinnacle of an extensive supply chain involving numerous businesses and stakeholders.
The logistics are complex and multi-layered, with water depth a particular issue.
The sea in the Dogger Bank Offshore Development Zone is up to 63 meters deep, meaning the Voltaire’s ability to work in deeper waters is crucial.
This is where its four legs come into play.
According to Jan De Nul, the legs of the Voltaire — which was built at the COSCO Shipping Shipyard in China — enable it to lift itself above the water’s surface.
With each leg measuring roughly 130 meters in length, they highlight the scale of equipment required to install huge offshore wind turbines like GE’s Haliade-X.
In an online Q&A before installations at Dogger Bank began, Jan De Nul’s Rutger Standaert spoke of their importance. “Thanks to those legs, the Voltaire can effectively operate at a water depth of 80 meters,” Standaert, who is manager of vessel construction at the business, said.
He noted that the Voltaire’s capabilities would enable installations further out to sea, allowing it to play a key role in the emerging floating offshore wind sector.
“Off the Scottish coast, for example, expensive floating windfarms are often the only way to tap into offshore wind,” he said. “The water is too deep for fixed windfarms, but the Voltaire can offer new opportunities.”
Thinking big
Once completed, the Dogger Bank Wind Farm will have a total capacity of 3.6 gigawatts (GW) and be able to power as many as six million homes per year, according to its developers.
Work on the project is taking place over three phases: Dogger Bank A, B, and C. A fourth phase of the wind farm known as Dogger Bank D has also been proposed, and would increase its capacity even further.
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Søren Lassen is head of offshore wind research at Wood Mackenzie, a research and consultancy group. He described Dogger Bank as “a huge project, especially if you combine the three phases.”
“It is a project that requires a lot of preparation,” he told CNBC. “There’s the logistics in terms of having the vessels to do the installation … and then of course, you also have the logistics in terms of getting the components to the marshaling port.”
Both of these aspects were being made “a lot more complicated” by the use of next-generation turbines and a next-generation installation vessel, Lassen said.
“You have … a lot of innovation that goes into this. And not only do you need a new vessel or new components, you also need new factories to build those components.”
As such, a slew of upgrades and adjustments were needed to “reverberate throughout the entire value chain” for operations to run smoothly, he added.
Bigger turbines, bigger challenges?
This image, from June 2023, shows tower sections of GE’s Haliade-X wind turbine at a site in the U.S.
David L. Ryan | The Boston Globe | Getty Images
Thanks to their sheer size, larger turbine designs have created a specific set of needs for the offshore wind sector and sites like the Dogger Bank Wind Farm.
“From cranes to vessels, we use a number of specially designed pieces of equipment to transport the Haliade-X turbines that will be used in this project,” a spokesperson for GE Offshore Wind said in a statement sent to CNBC.
Wood Mackenzie’s Lassen stressed the importance of having dedicated transportation vessels, noting that the towers of turbines need to be broken into three or four sections in order to fit on board.
Massive blades represent the biggest challenge, he said, as they have to be laid flat. “And that just means that you need a very, very long transportation vessel, [and] that you need to stack them up accordingly.”
Blades of the Haliade-X turbine stacked on top of each other at a site in the U.S. The past few years have seen companies develop increasingly large wind turbines.
David L. Ryan | The Boston Globe | Getty Images
Meanwhile, delays or bottlenecks can have far-reaching — and expensive — consequences.
Lassen cited the example of blades not being delivered on time, which leads to vessels having to “go away and then come back half a year later to do the installation. This is very costly, of course.”
And delays also lead to lost revenue.
“These projects are going out [and] generating a lot of power from the day that they’re being installed, pretty much,” Lassen added.
“So any delays [and] you’re also losing a lot of revenue, especially right now when the power prices are really, really high.”
The bigger picture
Offshore wind farms are set to play a significant role in reducing emissions and hitting net zero goals in the years ahead — but a supply chain that’s well-run and reliable will be key to the industry’s success.
This is set to cost serious money. According to Wood Mackenzie, a base case of 30 GW of installations per year by 2030 — excluding China — will require investment of around $27 billion by 2026 to build out supply chains.
“The supply chain needs to invest,” Lassen said, adding that it also needed capital, certainty and concrete, firm orders. However, cost pressures mean there is currently uncertainty over projects planned for 2025, 2026 and 2027.
“Any delays to these projects takes away volume from the supply chain, and the supply chain needs that volume to convert it into revenue to build new factories,” Lassen explained.
It is crucial that projects planned for the next few years go ahead, he added. “That helps the underlying supply chain ramp up so they can build the capacity [for] ’27, ’28, ’29 and well into the 2030s as well.”
The Hywind Tampen project is located in waters off the Norwegian coast.
Ole Berg-rusten | AFP | Getty Images
A facility described as “the world’s largest floating offshore wind farm” was officially opened by Crown Prince Haakon of Norway on Wednesday, marking the culmination of a major renewable energy project years in the making.
Located around 140 kilometers (86.9 miles) off the coast of Norway in depths ranging from 260 to 300 meters, Hywind Tampen uses 11 turbines. The wind farm produced its first power in Nov. 2022 and became fully operational this month.
While wind is a renewable energy source, Hywind Tampen helps power operations at oil and gas fields, the idea being that it will cut these sites’ carbon dioxide emissions in the process.
“Hywind Tampen has a system capacity of 88 MW and is expected to cover about 35 per cent of the annual need for electricity on the five platforms Snorre A and B and Gullfaks A, B and C,” Norwegian energy firm Equinor said.
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Floating offshore wind turbines are different from fixed-bottom offshore wind turbines, which are rooted to the seabed. One advantage of floating turbines is that they can be installed in far deeper waters than fixed-bottom ones.
In recent years a range of companies and major economies like the U.S. have laid out goals to ramp up floating wind installations.
Equinor, a major player in the fossil fuel industry, describes the turbines at Hywind Tampen as being “mounted on floating concrete structures with a common anchoring system.”
Alongside Equinor, partners in the Hywind Tampen project include Vår Energi, INPEX Idemitsu, Petoro, Wintershall Dea and OMV.
The project off Norway’s coast marks Equinor’s latest move in the floating wind sector. Back in 2017, it started operations at Hywind Scotland, a five-turbine, 30 MW facility it calls the planet’s first floating wind farm.
“With Hywind Tampen, we have shown that we can plan, build and commission a large, floating offshore wind farm in the North Sea,” Equinor’s Siri Kindem, who heads up the firm’s renewables business in Norway, said in a statement.
“We will use the experience and learning from this project to become even better,” she added. “We will build bigger, reduce costs and build a new industry on the shoulders of the oil and gas industry.”
Powering the oil and gas industry
The use of a floating wind farm to help power the fossil fuel industry is likely to spark significant debate at a time when discussions about climate change and the environment are at the front and center of many people’s minds.
This is because fossil fuels’ effect on the environment is considerable. The United Nations says that, since the 19th century, “human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.”
“Burning fossil fuels generates greenhouse gas emissions that act like a blanket wrapped around the Earth, trapping the sun’s heat and raising temperatures,” it adds.
The stakes are high. Speaking at the COP27 climate change summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, last year, the U.N. Secretary General issued a stark warning to attendees.
“We are in the fight of our lives, and we are losing,” Antonio Guterres said.
“Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing, global temperatures keep rising, and our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible.”
Imagine a court hearing where the plaintiff is not a person, but a damaged river, lake or mountain.
That’s the vision of a movement of conservationists — gaining traction across the Continent — that believes granting basic legal rights to nature can help protect it from threats like deforestation, biodiversity loss, chemicals pollution and climate change.
“We usually think about nature as an object” that “serves us,” such as a swimming pool or a natural park, said Eduardo Salazar, a lawyer involved in the successful push to grant legal rights to Mar Menor, a large saltwater lagoon in Murcia in southeastern Spain polluted by the overuse of nitrogen fertilizers by nearby farmers.
Granting an ecosystem legal status on “the same level” as individuals can help alter social attitudes to nature, he said, and give it important new protections.
The lagoon last year became the first ecosystem on the Continent to be granted a status comparable to that of a person following a campaign backed by more than 600,000 people.
Activists are now trying to replicate the model elsewhere.
In Poland, a group of activists this week will complete the last leg of a 43-day-long march along the Oder River aimed at drawing attention to their campaign to grant the polluted ecosystem — which runs along the German-Polish border — the legal status of a person.
After a massive die-off last summer killed thousands of fish in the Oder, campaigners fear the ecosystem may be headed for another ecological disaster, pointing to Poland’s failure to rein in industrial emissions that are thought to have contributed to the incident.
“There is a lot of suffering going on in this river,” said Przemek Siewior, a climate activist who joined the march. Giving the fragile ecosystem legal rights is “a really good tool for people to try to save it,” he argued.
A ‘voice’ for nature
The so-called rights of nature movement, which originated in the United States some 50 years ago, has gained traction in recent years thanks to growing attention to the importance of protecting nature as part of combating climate change and biodiversity loss.
A growing number of countries — including Uganda, Ecuador and New Zealand — have laws granting ecosystems legal rights, and court rulings in India and Colombia have recognized such rights and stressed the government’s duty to protect it. Just last month, Panama gave rights to sea turtles in a bid to protect them against pollution and poaching.
In Europe, campaigners are hoping to ride the coattails of the Mar Menor movement, with citizens’ initiatives pushing for similar recognition for the North Sea in the Netherlands and the Loire River in France, for example.
The Loire River bed at Loireauxence was completely dried out because of extreme heat in September 2022 | Damien Meyer/AFP via Getty Images
At the movement’s core is a call for a fundamental rethink of the way people relate to and understand ecosystems. But more tangibly, campaigners also stress the importance of ensuring ecosystems can be represented in court.
In New Zealand, granting legal personhood to the Whanganui River was seen as a key step to ensure the Indigenous Māori community living in its vicinity gets more say on the health of the ecosystem.
The Spanish law giving Mar Menor a right “to exist as an ecosystem and to evolve naturally” ensures it will be represented by a group of caretakers, made up of scientists, local politicians and citizens.
Inspired by the Spanish example, the Oder River movement last month published a draft law to protect the ecosystem that would include establishing a 15-person committee to represent the river. Three would be appointed by the state, four by municipalities and eight by NGOs; a group of 10 scientists would advise the committee.
That structure would “give the Oder River a democratic representation” and a “voice that it currently just doesn’t have,” said Gaweł Andrzejewski, the coordinator of the Oder River march.
The process is still in its early stages: Drafted by a lawyer in collaboration with civil society, the draft bill is mostly meant to “stir and start the conversation” with politicians and NGOs, said Andrzejewski.
Practical impact
Critics argue that such representation is largely symbolic and doubt it can do much to help protect and restore ecosystems.
Setting up committees to represent an ecosystem gives “power to particular people” to make decisions about what is or isn’t in its interest, said Michael Livermore, a professor of law at the University of Virginia who specializes in environmental law, among other topics.
But there’s no guarantee that they’ll make the right call, or that it’ll be heeded. “I think part of the issue with a legal right is that you still run into problems, like what’s best for an ecosystem? And who’s going to make that decision?” he said.
In Ecuador, for example, environmental activists challenged a large-scale mining project located in one of the most biodiversity-rich areas of the planet, saying it violated nature’s rights — but the court ruled against them, arguing that the government’s interests to exploit the resource were important enough to override the nature rights argument.
Giving ecosystems legal status also does not guarantee protection — granting the Indian Ganges River legal personhood in 2017 has not prevented it from deteriorating, for example.
Livermore argues there are more efficient alternatives to protecting nature, such as preserving people’s rights to organize, providing protections for environmental organizations or improving decision-making processes to give more power to Indigenous communities.
Companies have so far remained relatively quiet on the movement — to Livermore, that’s a sign that giving rights to nature doesn’t pose much of a challenge.
“If it’s such a powerful tool to protect the environment, why don’t the special interests that worry about that, who would be opposed to very strong environmental protections, why aren’t they fighting it?” he said.
It’s an hour before dawn breaks over the North Sea. Aboard the KV Bergen, the officer of the watch is wide awake.
The 93-meter long Norwegian Navy Coast Guard vessel is on patrol, 50 miles out to sea. The sky is dark, the sea darker. But off the starboard bow, bright lights gleam through the rain and mist. Something huge and incongruous is looming out of the water, lit like a Christmas display.
“Troll A,” says Torgeir Standal, 49, the ship’s second in command, who is taking the watch on this bleak March morning.
It’s a gas platform — a big one.
When it was transported out to this desolate spot nearly 30 years ago, Troll A — stretching 472 meters from its seabed foundations to the tip of its drilling rig — became the tallest structure ever moved by people across the surface of the Earth. Last year, Troll, the gas field it taps into, provided 10 percent of the EU’s total supply of natural gas — heating homes, lighting streets, fueling industry.
“There are many platforms here,” says Standal, standing on the dark bridge of the Bergen, his face illuminated by the glow from the radar and satellite screens on his control panel. “And thousands of miles of pipeline underneath.”
And that’s why the Bergenhas come to this spot today.
In September 2022, an explosion on another undersea gas pipeline nearly 600 miles away shook the world. Despite three ongoing investigations, there is still no official answer to the question of who blew up the Nord Stream pipe. But the fact that it could happen at all triggered a Europe-wide alert.
The Norwegian Navy’s KV Bergen, seen in the background, after departing from the port of Bergen
Against a backdrop of growing confrontation with Moscow over its brutal invasion of Ukraine and its willingness to use energy as a weapon, the vulnerability of the undersea pipes and cables that deliver gas, electricity and data to the Continent — the vital arteries of comfortable, modern European life — has been starkly exposed.
In response, Norway, alongside NATO allies, increased naval patrols in the North Sea — an area vital for Europe’s energy security. The presence of the Bergen, day and night, in these unforgiving waters, is part of the effort to remain vigilant. The task of the men and women on board is to keep watch on behalf of Europe — and to stop the next Nord Stream attack before it happens.
The officers of the watch
But what are they looking for?
In recent weeks the Bergen has tracked the movements of a Russian military frigate through the North Sea — something that it has to do “several times every year,” says Kenneth Dyb, 47, the skippsjef, or commander of the ship.
The Russians have a right to sail through these seas out to the Atlantic, and it is very unlikely Moscow would be so brazen as to openly attack a gas platform or a pipeline. But, says Dyb, as his ship steams west to another gas and oil field, Oseberg, “it’s important to show that we are present. That we are watching.”
Recent reports that Russian naval ships — with their trackers turned off — were present near the site of the Nord Stream blasts in the months running up to the incident have reinforced the importance of having extra eyes on the water itself.
The Oseberg oil and gas field, 130 kilometers north-west of Bergen
Of course, the gas didn’t come for free. Norway has profited hugely from the spike in gas and oil prices that followed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The state-owned energy giant Equinor made a record $75 billion profit in 2022. Oslo is sensitive to accusations of war profiteering — and keen to show Europe that it cares about its neighbors’ energy security as much as it cares about their cash.
But the threat to the pipelines could also be more low-key. One of the many theories about the Nord Stream attack is that it was carried out by a small group of divers, operating from an ordinary yacht. In such a scenario, something as seemingly innocent as a ship suddenly going stationary, or following an unaccustomed course through the water, could be suspicious. The Bergen’s crew have the authority to board and inspect vessels that its crew consider a cause for concern.
Russia’s covert presence in these waters has been acknowledged by Norway’s intelligence services in recent weeks. A joint investigation by the public broadcasters in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland uncovered evidence of civilian vessels, such as fishing ships, being used for surveillance activities. This is something that has been “going on forever,” according to Ståle Ulriksen, a researcher at the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy, but it has increased in intensity in recent years.
“We always look for oddities, anything that is unusual, like new ships in the area that have not been here before,” says Magne Storebø, 26, senior petty officer, as he takes the afternoon watch on the bridge later that day.
The sky is leaden and the horizon lost in cloud. Coffee in hand, Storebø casts his eye over the radar and satellite screens as giant windscreen wipers whip North Sea spray from the floor-to-ceiling windows. There are few ships around, all of them familiar to the crew; service vessels plying back and forth from the gas and oil platforms.
The Nord Stream incident and the new security situation has changed the way Storebø thinks about his work, he says.
He is “more aware of the consequences suspicious vessels could have,” he says. “More awake, you could say.”
Senior Petty Officer Magne Storebø keeps watch from the bridge
Soft-spoken and calm beyond his years, Storebø is philosophical about the potential dangers of his work. He has been in the Navy for four years, in which time war has broken out on the European continent and the threat to his home waters has come into sharp focus.
“If you are going to put a rainy cloud over your head and bury yourself down, I don’t think the Navy or the coastguard is the right place to work in,” he says in conversation with two shipmates later that day. “You need to adjust and to look in a positive direction — and to be ready in case things don’t go that way.”
Energy war round two
As Europe emerges from the first winter of its energy war with Russia, its gas supplies have held up better than almost anyone expected.
But as the Continent braces for next winter, the risk of another Nord Stream-style attack to a key pipeline is taken seriously at the highest levels of leadership.
“Things look OK for gas security now,” said one senior European Commission official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters of energy security. “But if Norway has a pipeline that blows up, we are in a different situation.”
EU policymakers see four key risks to gas security going into next winter, the senior official added: exceptionally cold weather; a stronger-than-expected Chinese economic recovery hoovering up global gas supply; Russia cutting off the remaining gas it sends to Europe; and last but not least, an “incident” affecting energy infrastructure.
Such an event might not only threaten supply but could potentially spark panic in the gas market, as seen in 2022, driving up prices and hitting European citizens and industries in the wallet. And nowhere is the potential for harm greater than in the North Sea.
Norway is now Europe’s biggest single supplier of gas. After Russian President Vladimir Putin and the energy giant Gazprom shut off supply via Nord Stream and other pipelines, Norway stepped up its own production in the North Sea, delivering well over 100 billion cubic meters to the EU and the U.K. in 2022. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visited Troll A herself in March this year — the first visit of a Commission president to Norway since 2011 — to personally thank the country’s president, Jonas Gahr Støre, for supplies that “helped us through the winter.”
“We have a huge responsibility, supplying the rest of Europe with energy,” Defense Minister Bjørn Arild Gram told POLITICO. “To be a stable, reliable producer of energy, of gas, is an important role for us and we take that very seriously. That is why we are also doing so much to protect this infrastructure.”
The vast majority of that gas is transported into northwest Europe via a complex network of seabed pipes — more than 5,000 miles of them in Norway’s jurisdiction alone. The North Sea has an average depth of just 95 meters. That’s not much deeper than the Nord Stream pipes at the location they were attacked.
“It actually doesn’t take a particularly sophisticated capability to attack a pipeline in relatively shallow waters,” says Sidharth Kaushal, research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in the U.K. A small vessel, “some divers and an [explosive] charge” are all it could take, Kaushal says.
The navy chief
After the Nord Stream incident in September, suspicion instantly fell on Russia. Moscow has a record of operating in the so-called gray zone — committing hostile acts short of warfare, often covertly.
To date, the three investigations looking into the incident have yet to confirm that suspicion. But European governments — and their militaries — are not taking any chances.
In the days immediately following the explosions, NATO navy chiefs started calling each other to try to coordinate efforts to protect energy infrastructure, says Rune Andersen, the chief of Norway’s navy, speaking to POLITICO at Haakonsvern naval base, before the KV Bergen’svoyage.
Everyone had the same thought, he says. “If that happens in the North Sea, we will have a problem.”
Andersen joined the Navy as a young man in 1988, in the last days of the Cold War. Now 54, he is used to the Russian threat overshadowing Norway’s and Europe’s security.
“After decades of attempts to integrate or cooperate with Russia, we now have war in Europe. We see that our neighbor is brutal and willing to use military force,” he says grimly. “I worked in the Navy in the ’90s when it was enduring peace and partnership on the agenda. We are back to a situation where our job feels more meaningful — and necessary.”
Kenneth Dyb, the skippsjef, or commander of the ship
However, he points out, his own forces have so far not seen any Russian movements or operations “that are different to what they were before” the Nord Stream attacks. “The job we are doing is precautionary, rather than tailored to any specific threat,” he adds.
Even so, those early discussions with NATO allies have now formalized into daily coordination via the Allied Maritime Command headquarters in the U.K., to ensure there are always NATO ships on hand that can act as “first responders” to potential incidents. British, German and French ships have joined their Norwegian counterparts in the monitoring and surveillance effort.
It is “by nature challenging” to protect every inch of pipeline, all of the time, Andersen says.
The role of the Bergen and ships like it, he adds, is just “one bit of the puzzle.” Simply by their presence at sea, these ships increase the chances of catching would-be saboteurs in the act, and hopefully deter them from trying in the first place.
The goal, in other words, is to reduce the size of the “gray zone” — or to “increase the resolution” of the navy’s picture of the activity out on the North Sea, as Andersen puts it.
In collaboration with the energy companies and pipeline operators, unmanned underwater vehicles — drones — using cameras and high-resolution sonar have been used, Andersen says, to “map the micro-terrain” around pipelines. These are sensitive enough to spot an explosive charge or other signs of foul play.
Equinor, alongside the pipeline operator Gassco, has carried out a “large inspection survey” of its undersea pipeline infrastructure, a company spokesperson says. The survey revealed “no identified signs of malicious activities” but pipeline inspections are ongoing “continuously.”
Senior Petty Officer Simen Strand speaks to the crew. “We haven’t had much to fear in the past. We are probably less naïve nowadays,” he says.
Perhaps understandably, the heightened level of alert has led to the occasional false alarm. A spate of aerial drone sightings near Norwegian energy infrastructure around the time of the Nord Stream attacks last year included a report of a suspicious craft circling above Haakonsvern naval base itself.
“After a while, we concluded it was a seagull,” says Andersen, with the shadow of a grin.
Europe on alert
The navy chief is nonetheless deadly serious about the potential threat. A Nord Stream-style attack in the North Sea is possible. Anderson will not be drawn on the most vulnerable points in the network, saying only that “easy to access” places and “key hubs” are “two things in the back of mind when we think [about] risk.”
Throughout Europe, the alert has been raised. This month, NATO warned of a “significant risk” that Russia could target undersea pipelines or internet cables as part of its confrontation with the West.
Several countries are increasing patrols and underwater surveillance capabilities. The British Royal Navy accelerated the purchase of two specialist ocean surveillance ships, the first of which will be operational this summer. The EU and NATO have established a new joint task force focusing on critical infrastructure protection, and a “coordination cell” has been established at NATO headquarters in Brussels to improve “engagement with industry and bring key military and civilian stakeholders together” to keep the cables and pipelines secure.
Norway — and Europe — are in this struggle for the long haul, Andersen believes.
Indeed, even as Europe transitions from fossil fuels to green energy, the North Sea will remain a vital powerhouse of offshore wind energy, with plans for a huge expansion over the next 25 years. Earlier this year, the Netherlands’ intelligence services reported a Russian ship seeking to map wind farm infrastructure in the Dutch sector of the North Sea. “We think the Russians wanted to investigate the possibilities for potential future sabotage,” Jan Swillens, head of the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service tells POLITICO in an emailed statement. “This incident makes clear that these kinds of Russian operations are performed closer than one might think.”
At the same time in the Baltic, countries are shoring up security around their infrastructure, at sea and on land. Late last year, Estonia carried out an underwater inspection of the two Estlink power cables and the Baltic Connector gas pipeline linking it to Finland, the Estonian navy says. Lithuania, meanwhile, is paying “special attention” to security around its LNG terminal at Klaipėda and the gas cargoes that arrive there, a defense ministry spokesperson says.
Torgeir Standal, left, the KV Bergen’s second in command
It was in Lithuania that Europe had its first major false alarm since the Nord Stream incident, when a gas pipeline on land exploded on a Friday evening in January. Foul play was briefly considered a possibility in the immediate aftermath but was quickly ruled out. The pipe was 40 years old, and had been subject to a technical fault.
The danger posed by Russia to infrastructure throughout Europe should not be underestimated, says Vilmantas Vitkauskas, director of Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Centre and a former NATO intelligence official.
“We know their way of thinking, [the way] they send signals or apply pressure,” Vitkauskas says. “We understand Russia quite well, and we are quite worried by what we see — and how vulnerable our infrastructure is in Europe.”
The watchers on the water
Back aboard the Bergen, life for the sailors carries on as normal. It’s a young crew, with an average age of around 30. Some are conscripts. It’s still compulsory in Norway for 19-year-olds to present themselves for national service, but only around one in four are actually recruited for the mandated 19-month stint.
The days are long. Surveillance, maintenance and exercises in search and rescue are all part of the crew’s regular routine. A helicopter from one of the Oseberg oil and gas platforms soars overhead, and the crew are drafted into an exercise winching people on and off the deck of the Bergenin the dead of night, simulating a rescue operation.
The ship needs to be ready to respond to an incident should the call come in from naval headquarters that help is required, or a suspicious vessel has been identified in their patch of the North Sea. But in their downtime, the sailors head to the gym on the lower deck, or play FIFA on the X-box in the sparse games room. Three hearty meals a day are served in the galley kitchen. There is even a ship’s band, cheekily named “Dyb Purple” after their commander. Dyb “takes it well,” says Senior Petty Officer Storebø.
In the daily whirl of activity, most of the young sailors don’t think of their work in the grand strategic sense of protecting the energy security — the warmth, the light, the industry — of an entire continent.
But the context of the Ukraine war — and the precedent set by the Nord Stream attack — has added a note of solemnity just below the surface of the comradeship and bonhomie.
“We are probably less naïve nowadays,” says 33-year-old Senior Petty Officer Simen Strand, who has a wife and two children, a boy and a girl, back home in Bergen. “We haven’t had much to fear in the past, there hasn’t been a concrete threat.”
Storebø agrees but is characteristically sanguine. “Russia has always been there … I’ve not personally felt any more unease than before.”
The next day, Storebø has the night watch, from midnight to four in the morning, as the Bergen travels back to base for a short stop before heading out to sea again.
It’s dark up on the bridge, with the glow of the control panel screens the only light inside. Twenty miles away, little lights can be seen on the Norwegian coast. A lighthouse flares to the south, at Slåtterøy, not far from Storebø’s home island of Austevoll. Beneath the waves, unseen, gas flows from the Troll field back to the mainland, where it is processed. From there, it continues its journey south to light the dark of European nights.
All is quiet but Storebø can’t afford to lose focus. “Coffee and music help,” he says. “I like the night shifts.”
As the officer of the watch, he has to be ready, should the radar, the satellites, or his own eyes see something out of the ordinary — ready to call the captain and raise the alarm.
That’s the job, he says. “You always have it in the back of your mind.”
STAVANGER, Norway (AP) — Norwegian oil and gas workers normally don’t see anything more threatening than North Sea waves crashing against the steel legs of their offshore platforms. But lately they have noticed a more troubling sight: unidentified drones buzzing in the skies overhead.
With Norway replacing Russia as Europe’s main source of natural gas, military experts suspect the unmanned aircraft are Moscow’s doings. They list espionage, sabotage and intimidation as possible motives for the drone flights.
The Norwegian government has sent warships, coastguard vessels and fighter jets to patrol around the offshore facilities. Norway’s national guard stationed soldiers around onshore refineries that also were buzzed by drones.
Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre has invited the navies of NATO allies Britain, France and Germany to help address what could be more than a Norwegian problem.
Precious little of the offshore oil that provides vast income for Norway is used by the country’s 5.4 million inhabitants. Instead, it powers much of Europe. Natural gas is another commodity of continental significance.
“The value of Norwegian gas to Europe has never been higher,” Ståle Ulriksen, a researcher at the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy, said. “As a strategic target for sabotage, Norwegian gas pipelines are probably the highest value target in Europe.”
Closures of airports, and evacuations of an oil refinery and a gas terminal last week due to drone sightings caused huge disruptions. But with winter approaching in Europe, there is worry the drones may portend a bigger threat to the 9,000 kilometers (5,600 miles) of gas pipelines that spider from Norway’s sea platforms to terminals in Britain and mainland Europe.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine in late February, European Union countries have scrambled to replace their Russian gas imports with shipments from Norway. The suspected sabotage of the Nordstream I and II pipelines in the Baltic Sea last month happened a day before Norway opened a new Baltic pipeline to Poland.
Amund Revheim, who heads the North Sea and environment group for Norway’s South West Police force, said his team interviewed more than 70 offshore workers who have spotted drones near their facilities.
“The working thesis is that they are controlled from vessels or submarines nearby,” Revheim said.
Winged drones have a longer range, but investigators considered credible a sighting of a helicopter-style bladed model near the Sleipner platform, located in a North Sea gas field 250 kilometers (150 miles) from the coast.
Norwegian police have worked closely with military investigators who are analyzing marine traffic. Some platform operators have reported seeing Russian-flagged research vessels in close vicinity. Revheim said no pattern has been established from legal marine traffic and he is concerned about causing unnecessary, disruptive worry for workers.
But Ulriksen, of the naval academy, said the distinction between Russian civilian and military ships is narrow and the reported research vessels could fairly be described as “spy ships.”
The arrest of at least seven Russian nationals caught either carrying or illegally flying drones over Norwegian territory has raised tensions. On Wednesday, the same day a drone sighting grounded planes in Bergen, Norway’s second-biggest city, the Norwegian Police Security Service took over the case from local officers.
“We have taken over the investigation because it is our job to investigate espionage and enforce sanction rules against Russia,” Martin Bernsen, an official with the service known by the Norwegian acronym PST. He said the “sabotage or possible mapping” of energy infrastructure was an ongoing concern.
Støre, the prime minister, warned that Norway would take action against foreign intelligence agencies. “It is not acceptable for foreign intelligence to fly drones over Norwegian airports. Russians are not allowed to fly drones in Norway,” he said.
Russia’s Embassy in Oslo hit back Thursday, claiming that Norway was experiencing a form of “psychosis” causing “paranoia.”
Naval academy researcher thinks that is probably part of the plan.
“Several of the drones have been flown with their lights on,” he said. “They are supposed to be observed. I think it is an attempt to intimidate Norway and the West.”
The wider concern is that they are part of a hybrid strategy to both intimidate and gather information on vital infrastructure, which could later be targeted for sabotage in a potential strike against the West.
“I do not believe we are heading for a conventional war with Russia,” Ulriksen said. “But a hybrid war … I think we are already in it.”
