Hong Kong-Flagged Ship Linked to Estonian-Finnish Cable Outage After Leaving St. Petersburg

During the December 25 disruption of the Estonian-Finnish undersea power cable EstLink 2, the Hong Kong-flagged container ship Xin Xin Tian 2 was reportedly passing overhead while en route from St. Petersburg, Russia, according to Finland’s Iltalehti newspaper.

“At 12:26, the vessel was in close proximity to the cable. At the same time, the Finnish transmission system operator Fingrid announced the disconnection of EstLink 2 from the grid. At the moment of disconnection, the transmission capacity from Finland to Estonia was 658 MW,” the report stated.

The Xin Xin Tian 2 departed from St. Petersburg on December 24 and was en route to Port Said, Egypt, according to the report.

Fingrid is investigating the exact point of disconnection to determine whether it occurred on land or was caused by an issue with the submarine cable.

On December 25, Estonian and Finnish energy system operators Elering and Fingrid confirmed the outage but stated that the cause remains unknown.

“Urgent measures are being taken to identify the reason for the disruption,” Elering noted.

Arto Pahkin, Fingrid’s Head of Monitoring, told Iltalehti that no possibilities are being ruled out.

“Every stone will be turned to uncover the cause of the outage. Sabotage is also being considered as one of the possible scenarios,” Pahkin said.

In November, communication cables in the Gulf of Finland connecting Finland to Germany, as well as Sweden to Lithuania, were damaged. The incident allegedly involved the Chinese container ship Yi Peng 3, suspected of breaking the cables with its anchor.