Nord Stream: Not Just a Pipeline

Nord Stream: Not Just a Pipeline 31
Similarly, Member of the European Parliament for the Swedish Centre
Party, Lena Ek, stated that it was ‘unacceptable to discuss whether a
debatable installation in the EEZ of an EU country should be looked after
by troops from a third country [and] this should be made clear to Russia’
(SvD 2007b). Hence, a primary concern was the question of manning and
supervision of the planned riser platform outside the Swedish island of
Gotland, and several newspaper articles in the autumn of 2006 had
headings implicating that the platform could become a ‘spy base’ (SvD
2006a; DN2006b; Spiegel 2006). The initial concern was presumably
rooted in the vagueness of Nord Stream AG’s Project Information
Document, which did not clearly specify whether the platform would be
permanently manned. The only information given was that ‘for now Nord
Stream considers it necessary to plan with living quarters for maintenance
and inspection crew in the order of 8 to 10 people’ (Nord Stream 2006b:
11). It was not clarified who these people would be, or if they would
always be present, but Gazprom’s 51% share of the Nord Stream
consortium led many to presume that they would be Russians. In a statement
to the Ministry of Defence, the Swedish Defence Research Agency
(FOI) speculated that if the platform were to be manned by Russians,
Moscow would inevitably demand to arrange for their protection, even
though this would be Sweden’s legal responsibility (according to
UNCLOS Article 60). In light of the Kremlin’s rhetoric about protection
of citizens abroad, the agency argued, one could imagine increased
military friction in the event of a crisis situation. If Sweden were to show
any form of weakness or lack of resources in such a time, it would ‘be
used by Russia as a pretext for the intervention of Russian naval forces or
special forces’ (FOI 2007: 17). Professor at the Swedish Defence Academy,
Bo Huldt, had earlier underlined the same point by saying that ‘one
can just look at how Russia has acted before against Kazakhstan and
Azerbaijan around platforms in the Caspian Sea’ (DN 2006a). As regards
the intelligence aspects, FOI (2007: 16) acknowledged that it was unlikely
that the platform would become a spy base, but the agency nonetheless
emphasised that ‘there is a well established system of cooperation
between energy companies and the military or security authorities in
Russia,’ so even though the equipment and sensors attached to the platform
would be legitimate and necessary, it would be difficult to control
whether they served dual purposes.
In fact, these concerns were not only related to the platform; the point
was also made that Russia could attach sensors to the pipeline itself,
which would give them the ability to detect anything happening around it.
By using hydrophone buoys, pressure metres, and the like, it would be
possible to detect any vessel movement in the water above. If these
movements were then matched with a registry of vessels and other
intelligence about the Swedish military, Russia could quite easily find out
what vessels were passing by (DN 2006a).
These arguments and concerns, however, did not pass without a debate.
In a 13 February 2007 interview with Swedish Radio, the Russian ambassador,
Alexander Kadakin, made the following verbal counter-attack on
the platform sceptics: