Offshore response plans emerging for subsea sabotage, unexploded ordnance
Key Highlights
- Seafloor infrastructure expansion increases exposure to sabotage, accidental damage and geopolitical risks, prompting industry and government responses.
- Recent incidents in the Baltic Sea and Red Sea have raised awareness of vulnerabilities, leading to calls for improved resilience measures like deeper burial and real-time monitoring.
- IMCA advocates for sector-specific repair solutions, faster response policies, and the use of autonomous vehicles and drones for security and maintenance operations.
- Cybersecurity threats, including GPS spoofing and system failures, are emerging concerns, requiring enhanced monitoring, transparency and technological innovation.
- Unexploded ordnance from past conflicts presents ongoing risks to offshore projects, with new technologies being developed for safe detection and removal to minimize environmental impact.
By Jeremy Beckman, Editor, Europe
Offshore energy seafloor infrastructure is expanding, presenting tempting targets to would-be saboteurs. While there have been few documented instances of successful attacks, industry associations are investigating where the next attempts might come from. They are advising member companies on how best to safeguard operations, and supporting response measures when debilitating damage does occur, accidental or otherwise.
The most publicized incidents in recent years were all in the Baltic Sea. The explosions that destroyed the Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022 were followed in 2023-24 by damage to the Baltic Connector subsea gas line; two severed communications cables in Swedish territorial waters; and severing of the Estlin 2 power interconnector and four telecoms cables in the Gulf of Finland between Finland and Estonia. The two latest episodes were attributed at the time to deliberate anchor dragging by Chinese and Cook Islands-flagged vessels operating in the area, although neither case was proven. But the damage did lead NATO to raise readiness levels.
There have also been multiple undersea cable cuts in the conflict region of the Red Sea that have disrupted internet access from Yemen and nearby countries out to India.
IMCA chief weighs in
According to the London-based International Marine Contractors Association (IMCA), the incidents have raised awareness of how subsea infrastructure can be deliberately targeted, and the potential use of undersea cables and pipelines for political intimidation purposes, or to probe weaknesses in communications/energy networks.
“The pattern of repeated disruptions has led governments, militaries and industry alike to recognize that subsea resilience is now a matter of strategic security," Chief Executive Iain Grainger told Offshore. “Subsea cables are the invisible lifelines of the modern world. They carry 99% of international data traffic and an increasing share of renewable power. When they are damaged, whether through negligence, accident or hostile action, the consequences are immediate and profound. The vulnerabilities exposed…are not unique to Europe; they are global.”
The association has more than 800 members in 65 countries, including energy companies, offshore contractors, suppliers and national regulators. Its members own or operate a wide range of vessels involved in the construction, maintenance and repair of offshore oil and gas and offshore wind infrastructure.
“We provide information and guidance to our members,” Grainger explained, “that supports them to manage the risks involved in maritime security in their own way and according to their own operational needs. IMCA members, like any other vessel operators, will themselves contact local military authorities responsible for maritime security in the areas through which they are passing. As well as engaging through the Joint Industry Security Group (JISG), IMCA is also the only association dedicated to representing offshore marine contracting interests at the IMO, the United Nations agency responsible for regulating shipping and maritime affairs. Through this, we have strong relations with flag states in order to advocate for increased security and support for our members.”
Last July, an IMCA delegation briefed the European Parliament and European Commission on the role that marine contractors play in securing the continent’s undersea infrastructure, with about 1,200 operational oil and gas facilities, 20,000 km of oil and gas pipelines, and more than 10,000 km of cables. In his presentation, Grainger noted the EU’s target of generating 300 GW of offshore renewable energy by 2050. This, he said, could necessitate construction of an additional 20,000 wind turbines, dramatically increasing the amount of infrastructure that could be targeted by saboteurs.
It would be stretching reality for the infrastructure owners to anticipate or pre-empt attacks, but the offshore sector’s response where damage does occur could be better coordinated, according to the IMCA. The same applies to unintentional damage caused by subsea power cables getting caught in trawler vessel fishing nets and dragged along the seabed, or by heavy equipment unknowingly dropped on buried cables causing power connections to be severed.
As a role model, Grainger cited the telecoms cables operators’ cooperative subsea maintenance agreements, such as ACMA, which provides three repair vessels on permanent standby in the Atlantic region. The operators also share stockpiled equipment spares.
Fast-track repairs to subsea power cables are more challenging in terms of the engineering, Grainger said, and no equivalent repair clubs are currently in place. But Europe’s offshore sector does have more than 60 vessels capable of laying and repairing cables, so the EU should consider policy reforms to facilitate faster and smarter repairs. This could involve a public-private cooperation between European institutions and marine contractors. The IMCA has also suggested a collaboration between Europe’s subsea power cable owners to identify sector-specific repair solutions. The same vulnerabilities, it suggests, could arise in Southeast Asia, where offshore wind farm developments and cross-border interconnector cable systems are on course for rapid expansion.
In addition, the IMCA advocates "building resilience" in the Baltic Sea and elsewhere in Europe via measures such as deeper burial of subsea power cables, more widespread protective rock placement, improved design standards, and use of fiber-optic sensing technologies to detect interference or vibration in real time. These recommendations follow the recent publication of the European Commission’s EU Action Plan on Cable Security, which calls for improvements in prevention, detection, response and deterrence to address threats to submarine infrastructure.
“Clearly, any acts of sabotage against subsea infrastructure will heighten the need for vigilance by all vessel operators, including offshore vessels,” Grainger said. “Some of our members make commercial use of autonomous underwater vehicles and autonomous surface vehicles. I would imagine that the use of such equipment, and indeed the use of airborne drones, for security purposes, is something that some marine contractors may be looking into.”
Piracy guidelines
IMCA is also one of six maritime associations (the others are Intercargo, Intertanko, the International Chamber of Shipping, OCIMF, the Oil Companies International Marine Forum, and CLIA, the Cruise Line industry association) that jointly developed the latest BMP Maritime Security guidance. This has been designed to help vessels owners and their crews improve safety planning for voyages and to implement best practice for detecting, avoiding deterring and delaying potential attacks, and incidents involving hostile state and non-state perpetrators. The guidance takes into account the dynamic nature of regional security situations, steering users to the most up-to-date security and risk assessment information.
Overt acts of aggression, notably piracy, have long been a hazard of offshore operations in the Gulf of Guinea, parts of Southeast Asia, and more recently offshore East Africa. With no apparent resolution in sight to the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, long-haul transportation operators have been opting for the more circuitous course around the Cape of Good Hope. Potential flashpoints for the offshore oil and gas and energy sectors in the future might include the Caribbean, where Venezuela has disputed the legitimacy of exploration in adjoining waters offshore Guyana; and the Taiwan Strait, where most of Taiwan’s offshore wind activity is focused (around Changhua County and Yunlin County off the west coast).
“IMCA’s Security Committee monitors a range of emerging and existing threats,” Grainger explained. “The nature of the threats to maritime security are continuously evolving, and the committee keeps abreast of such changes. Cybersecurity is another emerging threat to offshore vessel operators. The incidence of spoofing and jamming of GPS signals has increased in the Middle East, the Baltic, and the Black Sea. IMCA's Security Committee is responding to these threats by developing new guidance for our members, and to feed into our work with stakeholders including the European Union. Some of our members are also developing new technology that can deliver increased resilience of vessel navigation and dynamic positioning."
Unexploded ordnance
Widespread unexploded ordnance (UXO) deposited during the two world wars of the 20th century poses another potential hazard to subsea infrastructure. Hundreds of thousands of UXO devices lie close to the planned seafloor locations of offshore wind farms and their proliferating export power cable routes throughout northern Europe and parts of the Mediterranean Sea.
Various initiatives are underway to investigate and promote technologies for safe removal operations. The Clearance Activities for Marine Munitions through Efficient Remediation Approaches (CAMMera) consortium, led by GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel in northern Germany, estimates that 1.6 million metric tons of unexploded munitions are scattered across the seafloor of the German Baltic and North Sea alone.
Fugro, which recently joined CAMMera, reported that over time, corrosion affecting the munitions’ casings has caused toxic substances such as the TNT compound to leak into the ocean. The consortium aims to develop and pilot new technologies for large-scale recovery, cleanup and neutralization operations.
Fugro, which brings experience in UXO remediation and subsea engineering, is leading two programs:
- One involves designing tooling that ROVs can use to access, extract and contain the hazardous materials for subsequent safe disposal; and
- The other program will examine adapting the consortium’s technologies for use in different offshore regions, including the North Sea, Black Sea, Mediterranean and Atlantic.
- 3D acoustics to identify and measure buried potential UXO (EdgeTech);
- Underwater sonar technology that can help detect and map devices (Sonardyne);
- Mapping tools to help inform fishermen where UXO is located (Quintham);
- A subsea investigation tool for more efficient mapping of the seabed (Kraken Robotics); and
- Bubble curtain technology (Atlas Copco, HydroTechnik Offshore).
Speakers also addressed the measures offshore wind farm developers may need to consider for UXO mitigation, and associated regulatory/consent issues; UXO identification, clearance and relocation approaches and considerations; and mitigation strategies for protecting marine mammals during UXO clearance operations.
GUH Chief Executive Neil Gordon said that, with the UK government still targeting up to 50 GW of offshore wind by 2030, mitigating UXO risk from offshore and subsea projects is putting extra pressure on developers to deliver their projects safely, on time and with minimal environmental impact. Traditional UXO clearance has involved high-impact detonation, which can cause damage to marine habits as well as disrupting offshore construction. Regulators are now insisting on more sustainable practices involving implementation of lower-impact clearance methods.
“Although Global Underwater Hub is not directly supporting any of these activities, as an organization, we are very aware of the challenges that marine UXO pose to those working in the underwater industry," Gordon added. "This is most notable with the increased use of the marine environment for renewable energy projects at sites offshore and then the cabling required to bring the power ashore, similarly the increasing subsea power and data links connecting the UK with neighboring countries. This is not a new challenge or one just restricted to UK waters, but there are companies based in the UK that are at the forefront of this important area. What we are looking to do is provide a forum and platform for open discussion in this field and provide opportunities for collaboration amongst companies to improve efficiencies, safety and protection of the marine environment.”
Monitoring AI
“We lack knowledge about new risk scenarios that may arise or how failure of the AI technologies could affect known major accident scenarios,” Elisabeth Lootz, principal engineer at Havtil, said in a recent paper.
The uncertainty is exacerbated by “new domain experts entering the industry without sufficient knowledge of either major accident risk or of how offshore operations are planned and performed," she added. "This creates a competency gap that can affect the ability to identify and manage safety risks from early in the development process…It is a challenge when specialists who do not fully understand the offshore risk picture develop systems to be used there. They have the technical expertise, but some lack an understanding of the context they are developing solutions for.”
According to Lootz, “risk management is often restricted to each specific AI system, without consideration of how the systems will work together in operating environments involving many people, teams and technologies. We see examples of insufficient integration between the companies’ safety experts and developer environments, which could result in potential risks not being identified, assessed and addressed in the development process.”
At the same time, AI’s development “is occurring in a competitive environment where companies themselves are expressing concern about being left behind," she said. "This pressure can lead to safety considerations being de-prioritized in favor of rapid implementation.”
Because many AI systems are insufficiently transparent, she continued, “they can fail in ways that are difficult to predict or understand. This is especially critical when people are expected to monitor and intervene in the event of system failure.”
Another concern is degradation over time. “AI models may gradually become less accurate because the world and the data they are based on are changing," Lootz said. "This requires more continuous monitoring and maintenance compared to traditional systems that remain relatively stable over time.”
Havtil is also concerned that many companies in the Norwegian industry rely on a constant human presence to monitor and intervene if the AI system fails. “Research shows that people have limited ability to monitor automated systems without losing situational awareness and that their ability to intervene effectively diminishes over time," Lootz noted. "Over trust in decisions made by automated systems is also a known phenomenon that is not adequately addressed in many digitalization projects."
So far, no criteria have been developed for reporting AI-related incidents on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, nor has Havtil seen any evidence of systematic reporting by Norwegian companies, she added. This contrasts with how Norway’s petroleum industry responds to and reports on traditional safety issues.
“Informed decisions, aimed at reducing risk through increased knowledge, are a crucial feature of risk management practices," she said. “Our concern is that we are finding the opposite, namely examples of weak risk management in the development and use of AI systems.”
In May, Havtil issued a memorandum to the industry about how its regulations apply to AI, which stressed that the requirements for risk and barrier management are also applicable in respect of AI. “Prudent risk management is a fundamental prerequisite for operating on the Norwegian Continental Shelf,” Lootz said.
Over the longer term, offshore wind farms could themselves present threats to countries’ national security. According to a recent report by the UK’s Daily Telegraph, Chinese company Ming Yang, based in Zhongshan, plans to construct an assembly plant in the UK for fixed and floating offshore wind turbines. The first phase could begin at the end of 2028. But although the investment would create new jobs, offsetting those lost due to the slowdown in new North Sea oil and gas projects, Britain’s Ministry of Defence is said to be concerned about the security risk of allowing China to place wind turbines and digital control systems, including monitoring cameras, onto UK power and communications networks. This might allow the turbines to serve a secondary purpose, such as spying opportunities, the report claimed, providing a pretext for Chinese engineers to visit the UK more regularly.
Preventing outages
Offshore oil and gas communications provider Tampnet operates a growing subsea fiber network, currently 3,500 km in the North Sea and approaching 2,000 km in the US Gulf of Mexico.
“This, combined with offshore 4G and 5G networks and low-earth orbit satellites, provides high redundancy,” CTO Anders Tysdal told Offshore. “It also ensures that mission-critical communication remains operational, even in the event of disruptions. Even without external connectivity, private 5G networks enable local communication between devices and systems, maintaining operational efficiency and safety through real-time data exchange within the installation."
Tampnet operates 24/7 network operations centers in Stavanger and Houston and collaborates closely with customers, partners and authorities. "As an example of our business continuity efforts, we use sensors to detect potential threats to the fiber network, such as trawling, anchor drags or external impacts, in real time—helping to prevent outages before they occur."
About the Author
Jeremy Beckman
Editor, Europe
Jeremy Beckman has been Editor Europe, Offshore since 1992. Prior to joining Offshore he was a freelance journalist for eight years, working for a variety of electronics, computing and scientific journals in the UK. He regularly writes news columns on trends and events both in the NW Europe offshore region and globally. He also writes features on developments and technology in exploration and production.