Finnish investigators said on Tuesday they were looking into the Chinese vessel NewNew Polar Bear and the Russian-flagged vessel Sevmorput, as well as other ships that were in the area when a gas pipeline was damaged in the Baltic Sea on October 8. “external activity”, potentially intentional, reports News.ro with reference to Reuters.

Finland officially became a member of NATOPhoto: Antti H’m’l’inen / AP / Profimedia

A Norwegian Navy ship followed a Chinese container ship under investigation for damaging a Gulf of Finland gas pipeline around 3 p.m. Monday as it sailed along Norway’s west coast, according to ship tracking data.

NewNew Polar Bear is a container ship that plies between Europe and China on the Arctic Northern Sea Route. On Monday, it left the Baltic Sea and entered the North Sea to head north along the coast of Norway.

The Norwegian Coast Guard patrol vessel KV Sortland tracked NewNew Polar Bear from Monday at 04:00 GMT (7:00 a.m. Romanian time) near the southern tip of Norway until approximately 19:15 GMT (22:15 Romanian time) when the ship, according to according to sea traffic data, was approximately 70 km northwest of Bergen.

The area covered largely coincides with the area where most of Norway’s gas export pipelines are located, as well as some of its key oil and gas platforms.

KV Sortland followed NewNew Polar Bear at a distance of 1 nautical mile, which is about 1.8 km, for about 15 hours.

Norway’s military operational command center declined to comment on the operation on Monday. It was broadly stated that the coast guard “plays a critical role in maintaining the safety and security of maritime activities in the region, including fisheries protection, search and rescue operations and monitoring of maritime transport activities”.

NewNew Shipping, the owner and operator of NewNew Polar Bear, declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.

Norway, Europe’s biggest gas supplier, deployed its navy after the Nord Stream gas pipeline sabotage to protect its own offshore oil and gas platforms as well as the 8,000 km network of gas pipelines in the North Sea, Reuters reported. .

Oslo said it was closely following the investigation into the incident in the Baltic Sea, News.ro quoted.