Baltic natural gas pipeline shut over suspected leak

Balticconnector, which connects Finland and Estonia, is expected to resume operations only by late winter

The Balticconnector pipeline between Estonia and Finland, which was shut down on Sunday morning due to a suspected leakage, may remain offline for months or more, senior executive at Finnish energy company Gasgrid Janne Gronlund has told local media.

Launched in 2019, the 77-kilometer pipeline link that is used for transferring gas from a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) import terminal in Finland to Estonia has an annual capacity of 2.6 billion cubic meters.

“The earliest that might be possible is late winter,” Gronlund said in an interview with Demokraatti on Monday “But you should be prepared for repair works to take some time.”

The Finnish state-run gas system operator Gasgrid and its Estonian partner Elering reported that preparations for inspecting the gas route for the leak were underway. They said that the seabed structure would be surveyed to identify the exact location and cause of the outage, adding that a conclusion could still be days away.

According to Elering in Estonia, before the stoppage most of the gas that arrived from Finland was forwarded to Latvia.

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Gasgrid in Finland also said that gas supply there remained secure thanks to the Inkoo floating LNG terminal in the south of the country. The Exemplar vessel has a capacity of 150,900 cubic meters and an annual regasification capacity of over five billion cubic meters of gas.

Meanwhile, Estonia is getting the gas it needs from Latvia, which imports gas in liquefied form as well.

Last year, Finland leased a floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) to receive LNG, replacing supplies from Russia, which were cut in the wake of sanctions introduced against Moscow over its military operation in Ukraine.

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