Russian LNG plants halt exports as sanctions kick in
Two small-scale Russian producers of liquefied natural gas located on the shores of the Baltic Sea have suspended supplies, ship-tracking data showed on Thursday as US sanctions kicked in.
Washington last month introduced new sanctions against Russia in response to its unprovoked attack on Ukraine, including against the Portovaya LNG and Kryogaz-Vysotsk plants, with a grace period until 27 February.
Kryogaz-Vysotsk, controlled by Novatek and Gazprombank, last dispatched a cargo on 18 February, with delivery to Belgium’s Zeebrugge terminal on 22 February, ship-tracking data show. The data also show that Portovaya LNG’s last cargo was delivered to customers in mid-January.
A tanker called Pearl, formerly known as Pskov, was last loaded with gas from Portovaya earlier this month and is anchored in the Gulf of Finland, along with the Velikiy Novgorod, a gas carrier that is also servicing the project.
Source: Reuters
Finnair has cancelled its evening flight from Helsinki to Vilnius until March. The decision, taken on Wednesday, came after two other airlines said they would move their evening flights to earlier in the day. The reason: repeated airspace restrictions over Vilnius Airport in recent months caused by weather balloons sent over the border with Belarus.
Smugglers have used high-altitude weather balloons have to carry cigarettes into Lithuania since at least 2021. Last year alone, some 1.4 million cigarettes were confiscated. But officials say the timing and the direction of the current wave suggest it is a deliberate effort by the Belarusian government to disrupt air traffic.
In October and November, the airspace over Vilnius airport was closed 14 times due to balloon sightings. Kaunas Airport, the country’s second busiest, has also been closed. Only about 5% of all travellers in and out of Vilnius during the period were affected by the closures, but the number of balloons reported has continued to rise, and the airport was closed twice in the past week because of them.
Belarus says the balloons are Lithuania’s problem. The airlines are doing what they can to make that the case.
Proposed adjustments to the public-service-media landscape in Denmark could cost Bornholm its sole TV station. Three recommendations handed down by an expert panel on Tuesday for the future of the eight regional TV stations all include eliminating TV2 Bornholm as an independent outlet.
The recommendations are hardly a surprise: part of the brief given the panel by the culture ministry was to find a way to rectify a situation in which all TV regions receive the same funding. TV2 Bornholm, the smallest TV region, serves 40,000 people, yet gets the same 71.8 million kroner (€9.34 million) each year as TV 2 Kosmopol, which serves the 1.9 people living in Greater Copenhagen.
Two of the experts’ recommendations would redraw the map entirely, either by combining funding for TV and radio production or by creating 30 semi-independent local news outlets.
The last calls for the creation of a third TV region in eastern Denmark, and to include Bornholm as part of the coverage area for one of them. This may be the one scenario the other regions can accept, since they generally would remain intact, and, in fact, is something they long have hinted would be fair. In its report, the panel seemed to suggest it agreed. “To ensure that Denmark as a whole is covered uniformly, it is necessary to take money away from TV2 Bornholm.”
The author is a member of the TV2 Bornholm board of directors.
The concept behind an energy island is easy enough to understand: connect offshore windfarms to a converter station that can transform the electricity they generate to high‑voltage direct current and export it to markets where it is needed.
Indeed, in the case of Energy Island Bornholm, the matter should be even simpler: the converter station can be built on the island of Bornholm, about halfway between northern Germany and eastern Denmark—two markets that have said they want to buy the three gigawatts of electricity (enough to power as many as 4.5 million homes) the windfarms would produce.
What has not been so simple has been getting lawmakers to find the money for a project that has nearly doubled in cost since it was proposed in 2020 and now stands at 31.5 billion kroner (€4.15 billion). Uncertainty about whether Germany would still support the project after its federal elections this past February led to negotiations being suspended until May, but now it appears Berlin is eager for them to draw to a close.
Stefan Rouenhoff, a spokesperson for the German government, told an industry get-together on Bornholm on Monday that his country was willing to shoulder the larger share of the bill, and that he hoped a deal could be reached in time for it be announced on 26 January, when Germany hosts a wind-energy gathering of its own.
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His comments echo earlier remarks from EU and Danish officials that an agreement is close. Other developments—from the EU’s pledge of €645 million as part of its wider energy‑security programme to the opening of public consultation in Denmark and Germany—suggest they are not exaggerating.
The industry appears to share their outlook. The meeting on Bornholm was the third of its kind, and, say the Danish hosts, the best attended, with representatives from all the key firms and agencies needed to bring Energy Island Bornholm on-line by 2030.
Also on hand were those looking for proof of concept for energy islands of their own, including one linking Åland, Gotland and Estonia’s Saaremaa. The real question, then, may be neither if nor when, but where.
Saab, a Swedish industrial group, has been chosen to deliver three submarines to the Polish navy. The deal will see the first sub delivered as part of the 10 billion zloty (€2.3 billion) Orka programme in 2030.
Even before Moscow’s unprovoked war on Ukraine, in 2022, Poland was one of Europe’s biggest military spenders. Since then, it has expanded investments in its armed forces further, and today its military spending amounts to 4.48% of its gross domestic product, the highest in Nato.
The Orka programme makes up a big chunk of that increase, and, say proponents, the subs are necessary for Poland to protect maritime infrastructure. Currently, Poland has one operational submarine, the ORP Orzeł. Built in the Soviet Union in 1985, it has a reputation of spending more time in repair than at sea.
Saab’s offer was chosen over five other bids, in part, because its model is specifically developed to operate in the Baltic. “The Swedish offer is the only one that met all the expectations of the navy,” Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, Poland’s defence minister, said. Nothing under the sea apparently comes close either.
For someone from Denmark, the idea of accessing digital services or personal documents on-line is rather old-fashioned. The country is on version 2.0 of its national eID, and some 97% of residents over 15 use it to access all manner of public services. The private sector can also be partly thanked for the uptake: many firms have adopted the system as the login for their services as well.
Denmark stands out when it comes to eID, but it is not alone. All of the countries of the NB8, the club of eight Nordic and Baltic countries, can be found near the top the UN’s rankings of public services available on-line. Facilitating this requires giving residents reliable ways of verifying themselves—and forcing them to use it. The latter is an irritation in the start, but familiarity, as the Danish case shows, breeds content.
That should make the next goal something of a tip-in: this week, the countries’ digitalisation ministers agreed to pool their experience in order to be among the first EU members to roll out an eID that can be used in the entire bloc.
Brussels has stipulated that, by the end of next year, all members must offer at least one form of eID. Being a first-mover, the thinking amongst the NB8 goes, will allow the countries’ software developers to stay ahead of the pack, making their systems attractive to countries that will not have an eID solution of their own ready by the deadline. When it comes to identification technology, the biggest selling point may be reputation.
The concept of a maritime pilot is simple: a local mariner boards a vessel that is sailing unfamiliar waters and steers it safely through. Two projects being run by Danpilot, the Danish state pilot agency, may redefine key aspects of that job description.
In the first, begun last month, drones are being used to assist pilots operating on the water in the Port of Rønne, sending live aerial video to give pilots a top-down view when steering ships. Rønne serves as the staging point for several windfarms being built in the Baltic, and it is just this type of bulky traffic requiring complex manoeuvring the drones are well-suited to help with.
VesCo, the DanPilot-owned firm that is conducting the project, is hoping it will result in a system in which drones can automatically follow vessels to improve situational awareness, cutting risk during heavy-lift calls and reducing turn-around time.
A separate project, being run together with Danelec, a maritime-safety firm, may take this idea a step further by keeping the pilot on land entirely and instead navigating using the video beamed down by drones.
Trials in Esbjerg, on Denmark’s North Sea coast, suggest that using drones in this way makes piloting safer and faster. For local firms, the test flights are an opportunity to push their expertise in robotics and autonomy. Pilots, meanwhile, will be finding themselves in unfamiliar job territory.
Asset managers with Danske Bank, Denmark’s largest financial institution, may now place investors’ money in nearly all European firms working in the defence industry, after it removed 30 firms from its blacklist earlier this month, leaving only producers of the most controversial weapons out of bounds.
The decision comes amidst growing European concerns about whether it can protect itself from a Russian attack, should America not live up to its commitment as a member of Nato. It also comes as European countries, looking to build up their defences after years of neglect, are now making it easy for their militaries to spend—and giving them plenty of money to do so. Denmark, for example, is expected to increase its defence spending from the current 2% of GDP to perhaps 5% in the coming years. Meanwhile the European Commission in March said it was making €800 billion available for defence spending.
For investors, such measures provide moral backing to the interest they had already begun showing the defence industry. After years of favouring funds that made a virtue of shunning arms, investors, according to Danske Bank, have more than doubled the amount of money going into defence-related firms over the past two years.
Despite its about-turn, Danske Bank is keeping its restrictions on controversial weapons banned by international conventions, including cluster bombs, anti-personnel mines and biological and chemical weapons. Similarly, it says it will continue to offer investment options for those those who prefer their capitalism with a streak of pacifism. All’s fair in investment and in war.
The home guard on Bornholm this week sent out letters to 250 of its former members, asking them to consider rejoining the volunteer force, which currently numbers 300. It is a mission that will not be hard to complete: concerns about Moscow’s next move after Ukraine has led to a surge in the number of home-guard members nationwide. Last year, the number of new volunteers increased 35% from the previous year, the most in over four decades.
More military spending will also help. Copenhagen has vastly increased its defence budget in recent years. Only a fraction of this will go to the home guard, but the money will be used directly on the types of things that matter most to soldiers: guns, body armour and sleeping bags.
For islanders, the big motivator is geography. Being far removed from Denmark proper and having been left to fend for itself in the past has left its mark on islanders, and their home guard unit can operate with a greater degree of autonomy than units elsewhere in Denmark. Some residents and military experts want the military to take it a step further and reactivate Bornholms Værn, a volunteer militia that had existed for 400 years until it was disbanded in 2000.
Prior to Russian invasion of Ukraine, the home guard was mostly tasked with helping civil authorities and the police. Today, support for the regular army is increasingly being added to those duties, and the local commander expects more missions of that sort in the years to come. To keep up, he must keep the home guard returning.
Covering some 8 million hectares, forested areas in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania make up about half of the three countries’ land area in total. That is comparatively less than in Sweden, where its 28 million hectares account for more than two thirds of its land. Nevertheless, the Swedish forestry industry imports up to 40% of its timber from the Baltics.
Part of Swedish firms’ interest in Baltic forests stems from their productivity and their makeup. Latvia, for example, stands out for its high proportion of deciduous trees, such as birch, particularly compared with Sweden, where pine dominates. Baltic forests have something else going for them, too: they are expanding; in the past century, their area has increased by more than half.
In spite of that, the price of Baltic forestland has gone up. In 2000, a hectare of went for €500. Today, it gets €3,700. Much of the increase has been fuelled by Swedish forest companies buying up land. But, should their interest weaken (in January, Södra Skogsägarna, a Swedish firm that is the largest forest owner in the three Baltic countries, announced plans to divest its Baltic holdings), it need not result in a fall in prices.
Danske Bank, a Danish financial institution whose Swedish subsidiary follows the forestry industry, reckons that, unlike in Sweden and Finland, the price of Baltic forestland does not yet take into account factors like its potential for carbon sequestration, its suitability for solar arrays or wind turbines, or its recreational value. All of those could support further price increases, it concludes, even if the Swedes stop seeing Baltic forests solely for their trees.
An experiment in Rønne, on Bornholm, that has seen three streetlights doubling as charging points for electric cars since last May is being wound down after demonstrating its potential.
To date, there have been over 500 charging sessions. That, according to Beof, the island’s power company, is enough for it to conclude that the idea of integrating charging points into urban infrastructure is viable.
Beof and Spirii, which installs and runs charging kit, have been running the year-long project with the permission of the island council. Its members must now decide whether to make charging points a permanent fixture on street lights. Beof’s advice is that they should, since it would make it easy to build-out a charging network, without having to add new infrastructure to an often-cluttered cityscape.
For councils elsewhere considering something similar, the use rate is a good argument in favour of proceeding, but Beof underscores the need for clear guidelines and healthy portion of foresight. Without them, the idea is likely to short-circuit.