The shipping companies may have to pay a fee for the use of the Baltic Sea, which can cover the high costs of protecting the underwater cables. This was explained by Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur on Wednesday.
His initiative followed a series of incidents involving damage to cables in the Baltic Sea in a short period of time. The ships had allegedly damaged power and communication cables with their anchors in suspected sabotage attacks.
Last week, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte announced that the NATO would start the Baltic Sentry project. The goal is to “ensure the security of the infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.” As part of the program, the alliance will increase its presence in the Baltic Sea by deploying ships, aircraft and drones.
According to Pevkur, additional measures to protect the cables could be taken, including the installation of sensors to detect anchors that are dragged across the seabed or the construction of walls around the cables. However, there is also another possibility, Pevkur said: the introduction of a fee for ships that pass through the Baltic Sea. “If you go to the airport, you have the landing fee, you have the airport fee and that’s paid with the ticket” he told Reuters in an interview in Tokyo. “Maybe it will be the case that in the future, there will be costs for the companies when passing through the Danish straits, because in essence, it’s a premium for cable damage insurance” Pevkur said.
According to the International Cable Protection Committee, power and communication cables, as well as gas pipelines, laid on the seabed of the Baltic Sea, are particularly at risk due to the intense shipping traffic in these waters. It is said that up to 4,000 ships sail through the Baltic Sea every day.
Pevkur claimed, although the official investigations were still ongoing, that the series of incidents pointed to a coordinated effort by ships that were part of the so-called Russian shadow fleet. “If we see that all these ships are part of the Russian shadow fleet, even though they sail under different flags, then we naturally have to connect the dots” he said.